Earth as Teacher, Medicines as Memory

In this episode of Conscious Conversations, Mmabatho Montse speaks with herbalist, educator, and author Atava Garcia Swiecicki about ancestral medicine, chronic illness, and the Earth as a site of healing. Rooted in the traditions of curanderismo and Ubungoma, their conversation explores how plants, dreams, and ritual serve as portals to cultural memory and collective repair. Atava shares reflections from her own healing journey and her work supporting clients through autoimmune conditions, emphasising medicine not as extractive treatment, but as ancestral remembrance. Drawing from her book The Curanderx Toolkit, she speaks to the sacred responsibility of healing and the resilience embedded in Indigenous cosmologies. This episode invites us to reimagine health as coherence, rooted in land, lineage, and spiritual continuity.
https://www.ancestralapothecary.com/