When in Mexico...

3 cultural experiences that you can apply to your daily life

Today marks our second week back home after a 2-week-long honeymoon in Mexico. We began our trip with a few days in Puerto Escondido and drove to Oaxaca City to spend a few more days there. We ended our honeymoon in Mexico City where we spent lots of time eating, walking, and exploring the streets.

Whenever we travel we like to fully immerse ourselves in the culture, and this trip was no exception. We made sure to go out of our way to experience foods and customs that have defined Mexican culture for hundreds of years.

In today’s newsletter, I want to share with you a few of our favorite experiences rooted in the values of Back to Our Roots.

Each of these traditions has takeaways that we can all apply to our everyday lives, whether we live in Mexico or not. That is the beauty of travel- to learn about the different practices, traditions, and foods that give the people of a certain culture purpose, and then take that into our own way of life.

Temazcal

I knew I wanted to participate in a Temazcal at some point while in Mexico, as this is the original sauna experience. If you aren’t familiar with Temazcal, it means “house of heat” or “sweat lodge” in the native language of Nahuatl.

Temazcals were rituals performed by the prehispanic communities of Central America to be cleansed and rebirthed. It is said that the stone structure represents the mother’s womb. When you exit, you are being birthed into a new life with a fresh slate.

I joked with Sebastian that this was our rebirth into married life.

We did our Temezcal at a place called Temezcal Oaxaca. The owner picked us up at our hotel and drove us about 30 minutes outside of the city. We arrived at a gated property that opened up into a beautiful garden. It was such a peaceful setting with spa music, birds chirping, and flowers growing all around us.

One lady led us through the entire Temezcal ceremony, helping us into the small stone and clay structure. When we entered, she gave us three different herbs to smell- rosemary, basil, and sage.

After breathing their scent in deeply, she began burning the first one. The scent wafted throughout the structure and she poured water onto the hot rocks, creating hot steam. She exited after burning each herb, giving us time to sit with each other in the structure.

Every 10-15 minutes or so, she would come in to burn the next herb and pour more water onto the hot rocks. Like with a sauna, the beginning felt easy and relaxing, and then the heat began to intensify. By the end, we both needed to lie down to get some relief from the humidity.

Eventually, she came in and closed out the ceremony, letting us exit to a cold plunge that awaited us. I needed to sit down and let my body acclimate before submerging myself in cold, as you don’t realize just how hot it is until you leave the womb.

The cold plunge and massages after the Temazcal were bonuses that most likely didn’t happen hundreds of years ago, but something I was very grateful for. I left feeling cleansed, ready to embark on our first year of marriage.

Take action: Schedule time on your calendar this week for a sauna session whether that’s at your home, gym, or biohacking center. Go into the sauna session with something that you want to let go of. Breathe through the experience and focus on releasing that thing through your sweat. This is a perfect ritual to do with the eclipse tomorrow!

Moles, Masa, and Metates

Oh boy, where do I even start with the food? A breakdown of the history of each ingredient will have to be a whole other newsletter. But I want to share a deeper meaning behind the food that I learned on our honeymoon.

In Oaxaca, we took a full-day cooking class where we made tortillas, salsas, and moles. We learned about the rich history of Mexican cuisine and how it changed post-Hispanic colonization.

The chef of the class emphasized the ritual of cooking in Mexico. Every morning when you go to the market, you will see the same old ladies buying their ingredients for the day. They then go home and spend the entire day cooking for their family. The next day, they do it all again.

The routine and process of making a meal is what gives them purpose. They live to be able to feed their family a meal made with love. This connection with one’s food and how it nourishes the ones we love stuck with me.

How many Americans can say they put the same attention and love into their meals?

Oaxaca Cooking Class

Of course, we may not make time for this like these ladies do, but maybe this is because we view it all wrong. We see cooking as a chore rather than a ritual that keeps our family healthy. We choose the easy way out and feed our children processed junk because we don’t understand how this disconnect affects their health.

Mexican cooking isn’t complicated, it simply requires time. The time to nixtamalize the masa, grind it, and process it by hand using a metate. The ingredients are simple but require a lot of labor.

Take action: Set aside 3 hours next Sunday to make one of your favorite foods from scratch. Maybe you want to form mozzarella, bake bread, or create a salad dressing.

It can be as complicated or simple as you want, as long as you focus on being present and enjoying the process. No rushing through it!

Cacao Ceremony

We chose to end our honeymoon in Mexico City with a traditional cacao ceremony. If you aren’t familiar with cacao ceremonies, they don’t use just any chocolate. The cacao used is ceremonial-grade, meaning it is minimally processed and made with only the cacao bean.

It is also grown with lots of love and consciousness, unlike mass-produced cacao crops. Many ceremonial cacao producers have direct, close relationships with the farmers that grow the cacao crop.

Cacao is often used in ceremonies for its ability to open the heart. Because it has some caffeine, it increases your heart rate and helps to expand you (but without the jitteriness of other caffeine sources).

In Mayan culture, cacao was considered the “food of the Gods”. It was used in ceremonies to connect with the divine and tap into a higher power.

During our ceremony, we used cacao in our meditation to help us call in what we want more of in our lives. It helped awaken our hearts and connect to our love with one another.

Cacao ceremonies are beautiful rituals that can help you deepen your meditation and find more clarity about what you are feeling rather than thinking. It helps to bring you out of your head and into your heart. The best part is that you can do it whenever, wherever- you don’t need special training or someone to guide you. You simply need to be present and respect the plant for what it is.

Take action: Buy some ceremonial-grade cacao (this is the one I like - the price is in pesos). Set aside an hour or two to create a ritual around the preparation of the cacao and the drinking of it. Feel how good it is to be present with something!

The beauty of travel

I love traveling to different places and bringing a piece of each one home with me. While there are so many ingredients and experiences unique to a particular place, there is always something to embody and pass on to others.

Last night I made tzatziki for a dinner party with friends, a recipe I learned to make when I was in Greece. A little piece of my trip to Greece lives inside of me, waiting for me to pass down the cooking techniques I learned on that trip.

Now, I can apply the lessons from the Temazcal, cooking class, and cacao ceremony to my daily routine. More saunas, more slow meals from scratch, and more intentional time listening to my emotions.

Hopefully, you can also take away valuable lessons from my time in Mexico.

Until next week!

Madison