EMAZCAL TONATIUH

Beautiful place to stay and have a relaxing time away from anything but nature.

Located in Villas Santa Teresa, 10 minutes from Taxco city.

About Temazcal.

Some twenty years or so ago, a renewed interest in the ancient sweat bath, still called by the same name used by the Aztecs, the Temazcal, sprang up in Mexico. It's a part of the movement, now so widespread in this country, to return to the healing practices preserved in indigenous medicine. These sweat baths, still a living tradition in many parts of the country, are usually small round stone or mud structures looking rather like old fashioned bee-hives. Many more began to be constructed everywhere, and more and more often, people who are ailing will turn to them for relief from their complaints.

Sweat baths, of course, are used in many cultures of the world, both ancient and modern. The sauna of Scandinavia is famous, as is the hamem of north Africa and Turkey. In the ruins of Pompeii there are the remains of sweat baths, and in India, people lay in the sun, covered with leaves to protect themselves from the burning rays of the sun, to bring on sweating. It is, of course, a well-known part of the culture of our own Indians, and in this form the sweat lodge is enjoying renewed popularity.

 

The traditional Mexican sweat bath, however, differs in several ways from the others. It is not primarily used for ceremonial purposes, as is the sweat lodge of our indians, nor for relaxation or bodily cleansing or for general well-being, as are most of the other sweat baths, It is and was, as far back as we can trace it, a therapeutic instrument, an arm of the medical practices developed in what anthropologists like to call, Mesoamerica, that vast area that now includes Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. We know it best, in its ancient forms, through the Aztecs, and Temazcal, as it is still called in contemporary Mexico, is a Nahuatl word, taken from their language.

When the Spanish conquerors arrived in the New World, it was an integral and important part of the medicine which they found here. If was, as best we can make out from the sources still left to us, used in the healing and easing of almost all kinds of medical conditions, including, as we shall see, pregnancy and child birth, and still is.

VILLAS SANTA TERESA
Located in El Azul, 10 minutes from Taxco city.
The ideal place for a relaxing and meditation time.
Rustic cabins surrounded by nature, and a river, nice warm temperature.
Villas Santa Teresa, Home of Temazcal Tonatiuh.

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Reservations: (01) 762 621 1029

Temazcal: