The Waters Within—Lymphatic Care in Herbal Traditions with Rosita Arvigo

Hi there. Welcome to the Virtual Herbalism Conference. I'm your host, Lindsey Feldpausch, and I am so honored to be welcoming our guest, Dr. Rosita Arvigo. Rosita is an herbalist, ethnobotanist, and naprapathic physician, whose life, work, and healing practice has bridged the Western world with Maya traditional healing. Rosita is a native to Chicago, but she has spent decades living and working in Central America. That's where she apprenticed with the renowned Maya healer, Don Elijio Panti, an experience that she chronicles in her incredible book, Sastun. She's the guiding force behind the Abdominal Therapy Collective, which is dedicated to utilizing Mayan healing abdominal massage and hands-on methods that support healthy flow of blood, lymph, and qi. An international lecturer and author, Rosita has also championed conservation ethnobotany through initiatives like Ixchel Tropical Research Foundation, preserving traditional knowledge of medicinal plants. Our conversation, The Waters Within—Lymphatic Care in Herbal Traditions, draws on Rosita's synthesis of clinical insight with traditional plant wisdom, napropathy, massage, and teachings to explore how herbal practices and abdominal therapy can help restore the body's waters within. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Rosita Arvigo.

Thank you, Lindsey. It's great to be here. Thanks for the invitation. Rosita, I have read and loved reading Sastun, so I feel like I have heard your story, but I was hoping you could share a bit about your life's work with our audience.

All right. I'm a doctor of naprapathy, which is an offshoot of chiropractic from 1907. I went to the College of Naprapathy in the 1980s. Before that, I was in Mexico for a period of seven years living back in the hills of the state of Guerrero. I was with a group of expats who left the United States because of the Vietnam War. So I lived in extremely remote areas. Most of the time, we lived in an area in Guerrero that was a 18-hour bus ride off the Mexico Acapulco Highway, and then a 14-hour walk from there into this little orchard that we had pooled our money together and purchased as a place to live and grow all of our own food. We were blessed with 50 or 60 bearing fruit trees. The orchid was already about 50 years old, so there were lots and lots of oranges, grapefruits, avocado, bananas, pineapples. It was a little paradise. And then for protein, we grew sesame. That was our primary source of protein as vegetarians.

So at the College of Naprapathy, I met my husband, Dr. Greg Shropshire, and I just told him that I did not intend to live in the United States permanently. And the reason is that natural healing at the time in the 1980s was almost pretty close to being illegal. The FDA was busting people left and right, trying to discredit and definitely discriminate against all forms of alternative therapies or natural healing. And I just said, this is a very difficult country for natural healing physicians to live in. Now that we have our degrees as doctors of naprapathy, I would like to live where we can work, heal, take care of people in peace. And that's the reason that we went to Belize. So we moved to Belize in, let's see, 1982, right after graduating from the College of Naprapathy. We bought 32 acres of jungle, uncleared land. We became our beautiful tropical homestead.

Now, I've always been a herbalist all my life, ever since I was a small child. My mother said I was always interested in the plants in the backyard. I always brought the mint in to make teas, and I was always playing games with plants and dollies. So when I started my practice in Belize, it was important for me to know the medicinal plants of the area. And I tried several different people, but it just didn't work out. And asking around who is the best person to know about medicinal plants, most everybody gave me the same answer. That old man in San Antonio, Don Elijio Panti. He's number one. He's the best. And so I'm trying to figure out how I get to go see Don Elijio, and we didn't have a vehicle at the time, so I'd have to walk. So he showed up at my clinic. He showed up at my clinic in San Ignacio because he was looking for linden flower tea. His wife had died a few years earlier, and he said that he had heard there's an American herbalist in town. He stopped by our little clinic to find out if I had flor de tilo, Tilia americana, linden flower tea, because he said it's so good to help lonely old people sleep at night. Ever since my wife died, I can't sleep very well. I'm used to having somebody hold me, cuddle me, and whisper secrets of love in my ear. Now that she's gone, I'm all by myself in the hammock. And yes, I have a blanket, but if I turn over, the blanket falls to the ground. But my wife used to, if I turned over, she would pull me and caress me and all the warmth from her fat was so delicious. But now I'm alone. So do you have any linden flower tea? And I did, because it happens to be one of my very favorite teas for relaxation and such a delightful flavor as well. So I gave him a little paper sack of linden flower, and then he looked at my massage table and he said, Oh, you do massage? And I said, Yeah, I do a type of massage. So he went, Oh, my neck really hurts. I said, Get on the table. So I gave him a naprapathic treatment, and he was delighted. So when he left, I said, May I come visit you? And then when he told me, This is Don Elijio Panti. Wow, I nearly dropped my jar of herbs. But I said, Don Elijio Panti, I've been looking for you. I'm trying to come to see you. I really need to learn about medicinal plants. I don't know if you would be willing to teach me. He said, There I will be, neither more nor less than you see right in front of you. So come. So I went the next week, and I went every single week for an entire year asking if he would teach me. And the answer was always no. Well, why not? Because you're a gringa, and everything I know that I teach you would be lost up there.

So a whole year goes by, and almost to the very day in September, I arrive on his doorstep early, early, like 6:30 in the morning because I got a lift. Usually, I had to wade across the river, my backpack on my head, walk about a mile through the high bush, the jungle, and then go to the logging road and walk five miles up into his village, San Antonio. That day, I was lucky enough to get a lift right to his doorstep, so I was there very early, and he hadn't yet gone off into his cornfield. So he opened the door, and there I am on the doorstep. And the look he gave me was devastating. The look basically silently said, Oh, my God, she's here again. And I thought, I'm never coming back. This is my last day. I'm not here to bother this delightful, wonderful old man. So I'm not coming again. So he said, I don't have time for you today. I'm too busy. I haven't had time to harvest my corn, and it's raining, and the corn is going to sprout. So no time for you today. And I said, Well, I'll help you harvest corn. Let's go. And he said, You, you're from Chicago. What do you know about harvesting corn? And I said, Don Elijio, I lived in Mexico for seven years. I know how to harvest corn. Let's go. So he gave me one of those Maya baskets with a woven band. And the big basket, it's about three feet long, hangs behind your head, and that's where you put the corn as you're harvesting it. So we walked 90 minutes to this 90-year-old man cornfield that he had cleared, planted, cultivated, and now was willing to harvest bundle by bundle on his back to his family, his grandson and their nine children. So it was a family about 15 that he fed from his corn field. So I'm pulling corn, pulling corn. And around 10:00 in the morning, I'm coming down the same row, and he's coming this way, down the same row of corn. When he looked at me and saw a pile of corn that I had pulled, he said, Are you married? And I said, Yes, I'm married, and I have three children. And he said, Oh. And so at about 11 o'clock, maybe close to noon, because we're on a mountain top, the sun is just coming up that mountain, just reaching the top of that mountain. And then it was time for a break. I had an orange. I peel the orange. I gave him half, and I ate half. We were just cooling down a little bit in the breeze. And he looked at me and he said, What is it that you want? And I said, Don Elijio, if you teach me about the medicinal plants of Belize, I promise to work hard. I promise to be a good student, and I promise to take care of you. I could help you with all those muscle aches and pains. You're old now. It would be nice for you to have somebody as your assistant. That's when he stood up. And when he stood up, this golden beam of a giant medallion of sunlight appeared behind him. And it was something so mystical and magical. And he stood up and he said, Do you promise if I take the time to teach you, you will take care of my people when I'm gone? Yes, I promise. And so then that was the first day on the way home, he said, This little plant is anal. We use it for skin condition. That vine over there, that vine is called yaaxche. We use it for something else. That tree is called cha'ak. We use it for something else. So he mostly gave me Maya names, and it was my job to try to find the Spanish and the Latin names. And so then 13 years with Don Elijio. He passed away at 103. I was with him for three or four days of every week for seven years. I could not have done it without my husband, who was home looking after our brand new homestead, chopping wood. We had a wood stove fired to cook all of our food, and sometimes we had to carry water up in buckets from the river. Fortunately, we lived on a river or life would have been difficult. And my neighbors, the Flemings, who took care of my little girl because she would have been left home alone and they had five or six kids over there. I could not have done that without my husband and my neighbor. They made all of that possible for me to be gone so much over seven years. After seven years, I went every week for one full day, and I stayed with him several times over the last six years when he was failing and ill, unable to do the work that he usually does. And then I was able to actually hire someone to get the herbs that he was no longer able to go off to the field to collect. He had cataracts. So at the end, he was quite blind. The cataracts just covered his eyes completely. So then, Don Elijio passed away in 1996 at 103. I wrote the book Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer, to immortalize my maestro. Sastun is a word in Maya that probably best translates as crystal ball. But sas- means light and reflection, mirror. -Tun means age or stone. So sastun translates as crystal ball, but in Maya, it would also translate as light of the ages, shimmering stone. And so it was the possession of the sastun, a little crystal ball, that gave Don Elijio the power to treat physical and spiritual healing of ailments, and also the power to communicate with the nine benevolent Maya spirits who are the oversoul of the Maya people. Don Elijio said, they're not God, but they are the right hands of God. They control the rain, the lightning, the thunder, all of the plants of the forest, the plants of the gardens, and all the crossroads. Crossroads were a really big deal in the Maya belief system. Those nine Maya spirits, there's the Lord and the Lady of Water, the God and the Goddess of Water, the God and the Goddess of the Forest, the God and the Goddess of the Moon, the Sun, so many. Nine different benevolent Maya spirits, because there are also malevolent Maya spirits, but Don Elijio only worked with the benevolent Maya spirits. Since Don Elijio passed away, I've made a big effort to try to archive and record as much as is humanly possible of Don Elijio's knowledge and wisdom and other healers as well for the benefit of the people of Belize, the Maya people, and the world. It was such an incredible gift given to me that I felt impelled to share it with the world for the benefit of humanity. These traditional healers that I had the wonderful experience to be with know things that they cannot teach. They just know. They have wisdom and knowledge at the same time. They're also in very deep and close connection to their spirit guides. They all know that they have spirit guides. They all say, I don't do the healing. I collect the plants, I chop them, I dry them, and I put them in the hands of the client or the patient, but I'm not the one who does the healing. The healing comes from the plant spirits. They always have a very sincere spiritual bend to the true traditional healers. I imagine it seems to be true all over the world. They're humble, super intelligent, very spiritual, and usually very funny, like Don Elijio, who is the funniest person I ever met in my life. His patients used to say, Stop, stop. I'm too sick. I can't laugh so hard. Stop making me laugh. Ay, Don Elijio. That's enough. Stop. He was quite the entertainer. He said, Most people think too much. Get them to laugh. Half their trouble and sickness will go away, and the blessed herbs will do the rest.

Thank you, Rosita. It's such a joy to hear this story directly from you, especially after having read and loved Sastun. I would love to start off by hearing from you what the waters within are, both physiologically and energetically, and why this is such a powerful place for us to focus on for our health?

Well, it's extremely important because it's like any system requires fluid to flush through. And so the lymph system in the human body is everywhere. There's nowhere in the body where the lymph system is not actively carrying away waste and bringing in defense forces as well. My favorite herbal remedies for stimulating lymph flow is simply the corn silk and green bean combination. That is a real popular remedy in Central America, para las aguas, to help move and flush through the system whatever the body is holding on to. And it happens all the time, every day, every 24 hours, when we take in things we're not even aware of, like chemicals in food, even breathing in air that might not be as pure as nature intended. So I often recommend for people who I think need extra assistance with their lymph system—and that's just about everybody, really, except athletes, people who walk a great deal. They have a good, healthy immune lymph system. So I always recommend that people, when they get their corn on the cob, hopefully organic, to peel off the little yellow hair, keep all of that, and then put it into a large pot of maybe two liters. So that would be fine for maybe six corn husks that you pull off the hair and throw in a handful of green beans, bring it to a boil and let it steep, and then you drink that all day long. As opposed to drinking other water, you drink that all day in exchange for drinking clear water, which it has a proper terminology in Spanish, but it doesn't work in English. It's called a paso. Every time you're thirsty, you drink a little bit of that. But ideally, those two liters should be consumed in a day or a day and a half. I like that because it's so pleasant tasting. Tastes like corn on the cob and a little bit of a green bean flavor. And both of them are pleasant, easy to get down, doesn't require any sweetening, and children will drink it as well. And children have really enjoyed pulling off the corn here, putting it into the pot and then drinking that. So that's my favorite herbal kitchen remedy for stimulating lymph flow.

That is so fun. I absolutely love corn silk, the sweetness of it. And yes, it does taste like corn on the cob. So my question is, do you put green beans in the corn silk water as well, and you're simmering that?

Yes, you put those two together. Okay. Corn silk and just a handful, just grab the green beans and whatever fits in your fist, that's the dose. Goes into the pot of about two liters, and you want to boil that, bring it to a boil, then turn it off to simmer. And the corn silk can always be dried and saved. If you're in a rather dry environment, everybody in the States is other than Florida and some of those southern coastal states. If you're in a dry environment, it will dry in a couple of days. You can store it in a glass jar and probably keep it for a couple of years. If you don't have green beans and you want to do this in the wintertime, then just the corn silk by itself.

I also like some light touch. I've had several clients who have had lymphatic swelling as a result of breast surgery, where these lymph nodes were disturbed. So of course, there's going to be a problem bringing that back to the primary lymph nodes called the cisterna chyli. The lymph is flowing in that direction. So for those ladies, I used to have them just with the weight of their hand, come all the way down the arm and then get on the underarm and then nine times moved from the underarm to the center of the abdomen at the cisterna chyli. And that proved to be extremely beneficial. I had a family relative who was in an automobile accident. And after her surgery, her biggest problem was swelling in the leg. She had a leg shattered in several places. So the lymphatic swelling was severe. And when I went to visit, I did a little bit of that light hand work. Her husband, a very big, burly fellow, and I thought he probably wouldn't be able to do it softly enough because the lymph is the closest to the top of your skin. Right under the layer of skin are all of the lymph channels and nodes. So I told him to put a washcloth in his hand and just rub up towards the inguinal area with the washcloth and not even touch her leg with his hands. And that worked so beautifully. And they were able to do it twice a day. And in about 48 hours, the leg was almost back to normal because she was post-surgery after a tremendous trauma. And some of that lymph, of course, was the body's healing forces, reorganizing and repairing tissue. But it was reduced by about 85%, she said, which meant that she was extremely more comfortable and less worried. So twice a day, and it was about five minutes, twice a day. And that was the remedio, sagrado remedio, the sacred remedy. Simple as could be.

I think it's important for women to consider the importance of lymphatic drainage in the pelvic area for all people, but especially women, because our uterus can hold a great deal of lymphatic fluid that should be moving. It doesn't move properly sometimes because the uterus is often out of its proper position, and it's actually laying on top of its own lymph nodes. So that's why the abdominal therapy for women is so very important for returning the uterus into the pelvic position that nature intended so that what we call the five systems of flow in abdominal therapy are the arterial, the venous, the lymph, the nerve, and the qi. They all move together. They're partners. It's a partnership the five different systems. When one is stagnant, the others become stagnant as well. Just doing the daily uterine massage that we call self-care, your abdominal massage, goes a really long way to keeping the pelvic organs in position so that those five channels of flow, and particularly the lymph, can flow through the area and moving again always upward towards the center of the abdomen, the cisterna chyli. So at the same time, when we teach the abdominal therapy for women to do for themselves at home, and the reason we teach women to do it at home is when I observed Don Elijio doing this on his very large clientele of women, Don Elijio would see from 50 to 100 clients a week. Most of them were women, and most of those women came for reproductive problems. Almost in every case, he found that the uterus was lying to the right, to the left, too far forward, too far back. So in any of those positions, the lymphatic channels are going to be compromised because of an organ out of its proper position. Actually, the uterus, not pregnant, weighs about 4 ounces, menstruating could be six to eight ounces. So that's about the weight and the size of a potato, a good sized dinner potato about that big. Imagine if you took that potato, smashed it up against your cheek, and tied it there and left it there for weeks and months on end, when you removed it, it would be bruised. Bruised from the poor circulation and the damage to the soft tissue. So the same thing happens internally. So with the self-care massage, women are able to do this for themselves after a consultation with a qualified therapist. And then we teach them to do that pelvic work. And then always, always we end rubbing the cisterna in clockwise, nine clockwise circles like that. I use that as an emotional calmer as well. Also train my clients, my students, that when things get heated and you feel upset or anxious, afraid or angry, if you just lie down and gently, with just the weight of your hand, do nine small circles around the upper abdomen, right between the rib cage. It feels amazing. I'm doing it right now, and I can feel my pelvis responding by helping that lymph flow to move upward to the cisterna. Often, there is a common female complaint known as chronic pelvic pain. The medical profession calls it CPP, chronic pelvic pain. We know that that is partially due to the blockage of lymph fluid, stagnation of lymph fluid, and lymph is carrying away waste, like the veins are carrying away waste as well. So if there is waste in the lymphatic channels, vessels, and nodes, well, then there's going to be stagnation within the body, a buildup of certain cellular elements, not necessarily toxemia, but just decomposing cells, cells that die naturally, cells that send off their own waste material. It's very much like a household. It would be as if you never took out your garbage, if you never cleaned the sink. You could imagine what would happen, and that transfers metaphorically to the human body as well. It's the waste carrier along with the veins. It doesn't have that responsibility exclusively, but it also is responsible to bring in immunity. Immune cells and immune function comes through the lymph as well. So, yeah, it's incredibly important. And many chronic diseases can be greatly alleviated by considering what's happening to the lymph system within my body. I think that walking, I live in the tropics so almost anything we do works up perspiration. That is a very good way, within limits—we don't want people to get dehydrated, especially if they don't drink enough water or fluids in their system, and almost nobody drinks enough. So cheers.

I absolutely love hearing this, Dr. Arvigo. I feel that having read Sastun and remembering the story you're telling about watching him manipulate the uterus, the story where you first saw him do that and then learning that technique and seeing now that you have carried this forth to so many people, and it sounds like it's a really common condition. Obviously, through that lymphatic stagnation and congestion that's occurring, you've already mentioned that pain is a symptom, inflammation is going to occur. Is there any other symptoms that you are seeing and any other specific disorders that are paired?

I think also uterine fibroids and polyps can be partially put down on insufficient lymphatic drainage, and of course, insufficient immune system response to an object growing where it's not meant to be growing. But yes, because if the immune system were able to reach the uterine fibroid, for instance, it has the ability and the chemistry to move into that tissue and begin to break down the cells, then the lymph would be carrying it away after the immune system had broken it up. But the body is extremely intelligent. The body is a divine creation, and it can sense that the lymphatic system is not functioning properly. It's stagnant. It's not moving sufficiently. And that may be because a person just doesn't move enough. It may be that their body is overloaded with processed food residue and artificial chemicals and coloring agents. All of that ends up somewhere in your body. It doesn't disappear. It ends up somewhere, and it eventually has to be eliminated, mostly through the venous system and the lymphatic system, which are like sisters within the system for cleaning the body anyway. So yes, I think that uterine fibroids and polyps can be put down to an insufficiency of flow of the lymphatic vessels moving away. And I think that there is an intelligence in the body that knows that even if I break this up, there's no place to send it. And again, the abdominal massage goes a very long way to alleviating that. We also use castor oil packs on the abdomen and over the pelvic area for any type of pelvic organ condition. We also like the yoni steams. Yoni steam, like going into a sauna to help you perspire, to remove some of the normal amount of toxemia that builds up in every human body just by cellular breakdown. When you go into a sauna and you perspire, your lymph is sending out fluid, and that's a good thing. When you take a yoni steam, that steam is moving vaginally into the cervix, into the uterus, into the fallopian tubes, and via the fallopian tubes into the pelvic cavity. And that is extremely stimulating for loosening up stagnation in whatever channel it happens to be, whether it's arteriovenous, lymph, nerve, or qi. We have to consider all of those in unison because they are the five systems of flow that keep the human body functioning the way nature intended. I think we also need to keep in mind that the lymph is mostly water, and water has memory. I do a lot and teach a lot of spiritual healing or the wisdom of water plants in prayer. I feel that when you, for instance, Don Elijio taught us to hold the pulse. Hold the pulse, and when you find the radial pulse to say nine prayers. He taught me the Maya prayers. You could use any prayer that has meaning to you. Any prayer that makes your heart feel like it does that [hand motions over heart], just moves a little bit, that there's an emotional response when you think about that prayer. So it might be whatever, whatever prayer according to your faith, but three in each of the pulses and three over the forehead. And I feel like that, number one, goes through the ear, and the ear has more nerve connections to all the rest of the body than other organs and that it goes into the water system of the body because water has memory. Like Dr. Emoto proved that when he took water—you probably are aware of it, most everybody is aware now of Dr. Masaru from Japan, the work that he did with frozen water that he took from a very polluted lake in Tokyo. He put it under the microscope, and took the same water out of the polluted lake, put it into a little vial in the lab, and on that, he taped the words love and gratitude. He froze the water again, put it under the microscope, and it turned into crystalline structures that looked like snowflakes. Previously, before the water was exposed to those two words, the water just looked like murky mud. And so I believe that when we say intentional affirmations, intentional prayers, best into the pulses because you know you're going right into the heartbeat of the system, that the water in the lymph can actually turn from murky to crystalline-like little snowflakes. And that carries that divine loving energy everywhere in the body. It makes a huge difference to people. I've seen people under a great deal of emotional stress after nine prayers say, Oh, God, what a relief. And the shoulders go down, the neck muscles, they take a deep breath. One fellow said, Oh, my God, that's the first deep breath I've had in years. So I think the physiological and the spiritual emotional needs to be considered when we think about the lymph, because as you said, it's the water of life. It does respond to affirmations, it responds to love, it responds to emotional pollution, and it responds to physical, physiological, environmental pollution as well. I think that it's clear sometimes if you look at a person's skin here under the eyes. It's one of the very thinest parts of the body where you're actually just this little layer over the internal body. I always look to see if there are dark circles under there. It could possibly be from lack of sleep, but lack of sleep means poor lymphatic movement. That's why it's from lack of sleep. I always consider that as a means of determining if a person's health has improved under my care. Their skin, you can tell from the color of the skin, as well, of the state of the lymph waters of the body. Nature intended us to be bright and pink, the way you look today, healthy and glowing, and more pink than yellow or gray or white, and brown also. So you can tell on people of color, they get a delightful ruddy color when they're healthy, and sometimes a rather ashen brown when they're not healthy. So I always look for that. And the condition of the hair also depends on the lymphatic system. When the client comes in for the first time, and if there's a lot of health issues to deal with, no matter how many cosmetic products they use, the hair just does not look I don't know, just doesn't look organized. It looks... There's an oily texture to it, and it doesn't lay on the head properly in the lovely manner, again, that nature intended. And after a few weeks of cleaning the system internally, working always on the emotional body as well, then we find that the hair changes. It's quite astounding, very astounding to see the difference after drinking more water, having herbal infusions. And it's just any of your favorite herb, make an infusion, strain it, and you put it into a liter, and you're supposed to drink that all day long. So somebody could easily do that with corn silk or green beans or chamomile tea. Right now, my herbal infusion is linden. Linden flower that I collected over the summertime. I think those yellow flowering plants are also very good for the body's water system. That would be goldenrod, linden flower, especially those that are pale yellow. That's the way I envision the fluid in the lymph channels. It's a pale yellow color.

I love hearing these herbs that you're working with. And it's interesting because corn silk is also that beautiful pale yellow color. And I don't think about linden, particularly for the urinary or lymphatic system, but I do think about it for the cardiovascular system. So how do the cardiovascular system and the lymphatic system go hand in hand?

Well, it's the pumping mechanism. Whatever the blood, the heart pumps the blood, and the blood moves the venous system, And behind all that pressure, those other systems, the arterio, the venous, the lymph, arteriovenous... What did I say? Arteriovenous, lymph, and nerve, and qi. They all depend on the pumping of the heart. The heart is a biomechanical organ—bioelectrical, meant to say bioelectrical organ. Quite a miraculous thing when you think about it. And apparently, the electrical charge for the heart comes from the stars and the planets. That's quite amazing to think about as well, how connected we all are to the universe and how connected we all are together. So yes, I think that the cardiovascular system is essential for pumping fluid, and everything depends on the pumping of the arterial flow. It pumps other things. It moves the venous blood. A lot of the lymphatic system depends on movement. Primarily, movement is the pumping mechanism of the lymphatic system. A little bit of exercise every day. One person, a 90-year-old—what's that? Not octogenarian. The other one, nonagenarian, had reached 95. The question put to him was, What's the secret for a long life? I love what he said. I never forgot it. He said, Keep all your moving parts moving. Forgive everybody, no matter what they've done, including yourself. Keep all your moving parts moving. For older people like me, walking is excellent. I walk every day. Try to walk every day. No need to exaggerate. We all know we try, but it is my goal to get out there and walk every day, but I do have an early morning exercise that I do faithfully every day. It's about a 20-minute workout routine before I leave my bedroom. Once I leave my bedroom, the day intervenes, and then I just don't get to it like everybody. But if I do it consciously, sometimes I do them in bed, sometimes I do them sitting on the floor, but always it's a 20-minute workout routine moving as many parts of my body as I can for those 20 minutes. So times seven, that's 140 minutes a week. And apparently, 90 minutes is the minimum. 90 minutes of movement in a week to maintain physiological well-being is the minimum. And physiological well-being definitely depends on the free flow, no stagnation in the lymphatic system, carrying away waste and bringing in immunity. Again, if you imagine somebody's household where maybe the person's a hoarder and they never took the garbage out, now there's a medical emergency and the paramedics are at the door, but they can't open the door because there's so much debris on the inside blocking their way. We have to have those channels open and flowing freely. Obviously, they flow freely sometimes, no matter how we work against them, because the body is all intelligent, self-healing, and self-organizing. There's so much to be grateful for homeostasis. Homeostasis is that internal intelligent balance within. That just happens for us. It's so magnificent. It's quite clearly, to me, it just feels miraculous how these systems work together to create individual human beings that soar to the heights and sink to the depths. Detoxification and the lymphatic system go hand in hand since the lymphatic system is the part of our body that's moving away our waste products to the channels of elimination. I wonder what your thoughts are about the more heroic forms of detoxification and elimination that we see in today's world.

Yeah, there are so many. My favorite is two weeks of only grapes and grape juice in the springtime. Should be in the spring or when the grapes are at their best. And if you can, seven days is wonderful, 14 days is even better. Seven to 14 days on only grapes and grape juice. And you eat all that you want and drink all that you want. It's important that you don't feel hungry. The grapes will move through within an hour or so, then you should have more or you should have a glass of grape juice. That is very, very cleansing and very gentle. It helps the bowels move completely so that when you're doing a cleansing system, you need to be sure that your your bowels are emptying properly. Otherwise, where is it going? It actually feels a sense of resistance from a bowel that's constipated or congested. But if it's able, if there's room, there's an empty room, and that room is intended for debris, well, then it's going to move in easily and freely into the bowel system. I also think that a person must consider the condition of the cleansing organs, the liver, kidney, the bowel, the skin. All of those are very important. And I find that the human body will choose the skin as a last resort. I remember, I used to be a fasting supervisor in the state of Florida, where I supervised people who were on water fasting. That's water, not juice fasting, water fasting from anywhere from 3 hours to 30 days. I had one client who fasted for 90 days. So taking care of people on water fasting, you learn a great deal about elimination. I know that people who take recreational drugs have a pretty good backup in the liver. When they do something like that grape diet or the other cleansing diets that people use, you are going to see some skin outbreaks because it's more than the rest of the body can deal with all at once. I'm not greatly in favor of those rather too strict and sometimes too vial, like the purges. In the purges, you lose a lot of electrolytes, and there are so many efficient ways to move waste out of the bowel. It don't need to be so heroic. Remember, the body is self-healing, self-organizing, self-regenerating, and so it knows what to do. Sometimes it does need more help. That's true. But that should always be approached wisely and gently, not heroically. So that's my favorite, and that's the one I've used for, I don't know, 50 or 60 years. I'm 84 now. I have many things that most old people have, but mostly I feel fine. Most of the time I feel great. And I think that taking seven days a year to do something like a cleansing regime, if you wish, but then that assumes that the body's dirty. I even have issue with the word cleansing. It's not dirty inside. It is stagnant and congested in areas and some of the processes for removing a normal amount of waste that your cells produce every day. The waste in the food that is not nutrition, it goes somewhere. It just doesn't disappear. So it's more improving the systems of flow, giving them open passage, if you will. And if you simply do that, the body takes care of itself if you take care of the body.

I love that idea. If you smoke, you drink, you do a lot of recreational drugs. Some recreational drugs is just part of human life. It's the soma that human beings like and sometimes require. But I've had clients who did a lot of ecstasy. What is that? What is that word? Mtmb? I don't know what's the initials for it. And she came to me to do that grape fast. So we did the grape fast, and on about day five or six, she had this huge rash on her buttocks. I recognize that as a drug rash because of my experience water fasting people for a full year as the health director. And those people had taken SSRIs like the anti-anxiety drugs. Help me out. What are the anti-anxiety drugs? Their serotonin inhibitors, those things people take. And I recognize that they come out at the low back and around the buttocks. And I said to her, she was a herbalist. I said, I don't think you take any prescription drugs, but is there something else you're taking? And she admitted that every weekend, her and her boyfriend take ecstasy. Well, no judgment. But where's the residue of that drug, which is a pretty heavy chemical compound? Where is it going if you take it every weekend, every five days, basically? You're returning, you're putting that back into your system, insufficient time for the body to clear it itself. It's fascinating how the skin will show a great deal of the buildup of ingested fluids in the body that should be moving, not stagnant. Anyway, I have issue with this cleansing. I prefer not to say that the yoni steam is a uterine cleanse. It may be a uterine flush, but it's not a uterine cleanse because the uterus is not dirty.

In your discussion about lymphatic massage, we have talked about the gentle nature of that practice. How do you feel more deep tissue massage impacts the lymphatic system?

Yeah, I don't think it's negatively impacted, but it's not specifically impacted. Where a lymphatic massage we know, is very gentle all over the body. I find it more relaxing than a deep tissue massage, which sometimes can be painful. I had a lymphatic massage in Virginia Beach at the ARE, the Association of Research and Enlightenment, that holds the works of Edgar Cayce. It's a teaching institution there. They also have a healing spa. We had a lymphatic massage there, and it was just that. Very, very light all over the body, but always moving towards the cisterna chyli and the liver. Always moving towards that way. Whatever the part of your body that you're doing that. It has to be moving down this way. It's always good to start with those nine light circles so that you open those channels like knocking on the door. Basically, wake up, we're going to bring in some more material right now. When you do that little light circle right between the rib cage, you'd go a long way to pumping lymphatic fluids out of the cisterna chyli. Then, though, it can take in more.

Can you speak a little bit about what herbs you like to use topically for massage? I know we mentioned castor oil packs, and we had some internal use of herbs, but I love to hear what you like to apply topically as well.

Honestly, I would not put oil. If you want something that would be relaxing to the tissue so that they open, like a rose-scented oil, any oil, I think, is going to be counterproductive. A lymphatic massage should not have oil on it. It should be either a wash cloth or just your hands. Like that, I really can't think of any specific herb that you could put on the skin that might be opening. If I had to choose any one, I would choose basil. Simple. Just basil in a basin and soak a washcloth in that and then use that to do that very light work over it. No oil, because then you're clogging up the way that the lymph would be moving through and adding more viscous material into the lymph system, into the lymph nodes and channels. So just water, really. Loving touch and care and concern goes a very long way. That's medicine, too.

That's really interesting. I feel that common protocols for, say, mastitis, when we have clogged ducts and are experiencing the pain and inflammation that goes with that is to apply poke root oil or violet oil to really move that lymph out of it. That's to help the sliding for the sliding process. You're still moving, but I thought you were referring to the whole body. Okay, so something like the breast, that would be fine. A little bit of oil to help the movement. As long as you're moving towards the cisterna chyli, then you're doing good for the lymphatic system. Yeah, there are many things that people use. I don't particularly. I also think hot and cold in the shower is excellent. It's about one... Let's say, you start with one minute hot, 30 seconds cold, one minute hot, 30 seconds cold. Then you go to 10 seconds hot and 2 seconds cold, back and forth until basically you're just bored with it. And then a towel and really rub until you see yourself look ruddy and reddish. That's excellent, excellent for the lymphatic system. There is a process in Germany, Dr. Kneipp. Kneipp had a very famous spa. You know what "spa" comes from? Sanitas Per Aqua. Healing through water. Sanitas Per Aqua. So his system for the lymph was to have a person naked in a room, and the attendant came in with a water hose, and up and down, and up and down the body with the pressure of the water. The water under pressure, up and down the body, moving. And he had a very in a specific way that the body was subjected to this flow of water under power. Almost miraculous healings. But yeah, it was a magical spa, Dr. Kneipp. He's still very famous. There's still a lot of literature left about his healing with water techniques.

Well, as a very watery person, I agree that water is so important and magical. I would love to hear a little bit more about breast health and the lymphatic connection between the stagnation that occurs and the diseases that come from that.

I just feel that it's always important for women to do that light massage over the breast coming from the underarm. Actually, I always start from the hand. This is part of my daily routine. I start from the hand and I come down like this all the way to the underarm nine times, and then from the underarm to the cisterna chyli nine times, and then clockwise around the breast nine times. I only do that with my hand. I don't put any oil on it. I suppose you could. As you said, the violet oil sounds wonderful. St. John's wort oil would be good as well. But I think that we can help ourselves. It's important. I spent 50 years of my life with traditional healers, traditional healers who never went to school, never learned to read or write. And as a rule, were very poor. There just was not the availability to buy violet oil. If they wanted castor oil, they made castor oil. There's a shift from that mindset from the privileged to the less privileged. When you don't have the capacity to purchase those things, and not only because the money wasn't there, because the availability wasn't there. If you wanted something, you went to the forest, you

went to the garden. You picked it with love and care, appreciation and gratitude. You brought it home, and you would make what it is that you needed.

Every household in Central America, when I first went there in the 1970s, always had a bottle of store-bought alcohol with a big branch of rue put into it. And they say in Spanish, "Cuando hay duda, busca la ruda." When you don't know what else to do, go get the rue. And so that was used for swelling. We know that swelling is partially from the lymph system.

And then I think that there's a little plant known as life everlasting, mother of thousands, Kalanchoe Pinnata. That's the number one specific herb to use as a bath to move the lymph. It is very watery. It's a succulent plant. We know it as mother of a thousands or life everlasting, siempre viva. It's the little plant that if you just lay the leaf down, it will sprout. Every little crenation in the leaf turns into another plant. So it's when you put it in your hand and squeeze it, it crackles. It's got so much water in it. And when we collected plants for cancer and AIDS research in Washington for a period of nine years, that was one of the plants we collected, and they all had to be dried and sent to Washington for testing in the laboratory on 99 different cancer tumors. We could never dry that plant. We took it to the bakery, and after the ovens had been on all night long and they turned the ovens off, they stay hot for hours and hours. So we put the whole bag of life everlasting, which was now a big ball of mush, into the oven, and it came out a smaller ball of mush. Impossible to dry. So that's a wonderful plant for bathing areas of the body that need some assistance with moving tissue flow, especially where there's a swelling. Beautiful.

This made me think about the style of preparation. I know from reading Sastun that there was a lot of infusion-decoction happening. Lymphatic system. Do you have specific internal preparations that you tend towards? Obviously, infusions, most likely. Do you use tinctures, vinegar, anything else? I do use tinctures. I had a tincture company for about 20 years, Rainforest Remedies. We have 20 different formulas. One specific for the lymph nodes, not especially, but we like in the tropics, we like bitters. We feel that bitters are panaceas, good for whatever ails you. The bitters are stimulating to all those systems of flows. We have a wonderful plant in the tropics, it's called jackass bitters. The Creole people say, "It so bitter, you have to be one jackass for drink it." But it's Neurolaena lobata, also known as golden bitters, alligator's paw, and mano de lagarto in other parts of Central America. When we find a medicinal plant with many different names from different cultures, we know right away that we're dealing with a super dynamic plant that has been with human beings for generations because whatever we say it does, it does. Like one of those plants whose use is you can write in stone because you never have to erase it because if you wrote it in stone, it's there forever. We like bitters. Motherwort would be a very good one for people in the northern climates. Echinacea, of course. But bitters. Get your bitters. Don Elijio always said, "The bitter, the better. Sweet doesn't cure. Bitter cures." I love that. The bitter, the better. Yeah, so for me, it's bitters. We have one called jungle bitters. That would be the one that I would say, yes, that would be a formula for moving the lymph, helping the venous blood flow as well, and helping the liver eliminate some of the debris that it's holding on to, trying its best to keep the body clean and well-nourished with many of these 500 functions that it performs for the body.

Well, I am absolutely a fan of bitters as well, and recently was researching in-depth the TAS2R receptors for bitters, and it's incredible that we have bitter receptors throughout our entire body, and this is working... As soon as you put it on your tongue, your body responds. You just put it on your tongue, and it's an alert system. Bells go off. We have talked about some of the experiences you've had with lymphatic tending, really shifting chronic disease patterns or even acute disease patterns. But I would love to hear if you have any magical stories that you would like to share about any lymphatic shifts that you've used, maybe any herbs that were involved where you've seen incredible outcomes, because I feel like you have, in your 50 plus years of practice, seen a lot of incredible things.

Well, I think you do see when the lymph is stagnant, there is external evidence, swelling. When the swelling is relieved, you know that you have assisted the lymph in its return. I remember a fellow, he was in his 50s, and at age of around 50 now, the prostate begins to swell. As the prostate swells, it puts pressure on the pelvic lymph nodes and vessels. He came as a client, and I gave him the same treatment we would use on male or female, except for the guy, of course, there's no uterus, but he has a prostate, and that needs work as well. I taught him to do the self-care massage. Now, one of the manifestations he had of this prostatic swelling was, of course, urgency to urinate and then not full stream, broken stream, and especially swollen feet. That was very interesting, the swollen feet. They were even venous. You could see blue veins, and then there was all that lymphatic swelling at the bottom of the body because it was having a hard time returning up. So you see above the feet there was this enlarged organ sitting on the pelvic floor, not allowing the lymphatic fluid to move back upwards towards the cisterna chyli and the liver. So I taught him the self-care, and I looked at those feet and I thought, wow, that was really swelling. So I saw him seven days later in the marketplace, and I said, "So how is it going?" And I looked down in his feet and I said, "Wow, very good. You've been doing your self-care." He laughed and he said, "I taught my girlfriend to do it. It's our guys." Yeah, so I thought that was very dramatic, and it was very, very impressive to him as well.

When your lymph is not moving properly, it's Murphy's law. It's very difficult to put something specific on it other than that chronic pelvic pain and swelling in the pelvic floor. You're going to see issues of venous return, lymphatic return, even arterial flow going into it. But it's going to be everywhere. It might be a headache. It might be a foul tasting tongue, it might be bad breath, it might be an earache, it might be breast congestion, it might be indigestion, it might be swelling, it might be backache. It's a system. We can't really isolate any part of the body unless you see a swelling that you can say is specific to lymph stagnation because the lymph is everywhere. If it's not moving, then all organs, glands, systems, and cells are suffering. They're all working at less than maximum efficiency, and that's disease.

That's a really beautiful way to wrap up the lymphatic system. Thank you so much, Rosita. I would love to share with our listeners where they can find you and your work, and if you have any upcoming events or things you'd like to speak towards. Sure. At www. AbdominalTherapyCollective. Com. I'm no longer involved with the Arvigo Institute or the Arvigo Techniques Maya Abdominal Massage. My organization is the Collective of Teachers, the Abdominal Therapy Collective. And then my own website is RositArvigo. Com. Those two. Thank you so much for your teachings today. It has been such a pleasure learning from you. My pleasure. Thank you. Thank you, Lindsey. It was a nice little break for me. That was good. I enjoyed it.