Green Health · Guatemala
Maya healing knowledge is alive.
For generations, Maya families, Healers and Traditional Councils in Guatemala have kept a whole health system alive. Modern medicine does a great deal, and still it has not found every answer. Green Health builds bridges so that people can reach this ancient knowledge, and works with modern science so that the two stand side by side, as equals.
Our purpose is to regenerate the relationship between human health and the living systems that sustain it. Our vision: A global health movement rooted in the inner Kajtzuk (physical-mental-emotional-spiritual) and outer Kawilal balance, brought through coherent relationship.
The story film
One health, learned in the forest.
In the Petén lowlands, where public health services rarely reach, Maya healers treat people with the plants around them. Their medicine starts from one idea: the health of people, plants, animals and land is one health. The film follows that idea from the forest to the nursery, shows how practical and precise this knowledge is, and tells how trust between healers and scientists grows, slowly, one relationship at a time.
Watch the story film
What we do to the system, the system gives back to us.
The movement
Green Health is a movement for health.
It starts from one health: people, animals, plants, rivers and soil are well or unwell together.
Many native healing systems begin from this understanding, and Maya medicine is one of them. The Releb'aal Saq'e' Council of Maya Healers in Petén says it plainly: "The health of humans, animals, plants, rivers, soil, air… is one and the same."
Modern health care has mostly looked at these as separate fields. Jun Kawilal, a native One Health approach, measures and addresses the health of people, animals and plants as one. In Petén, communities already use it to assess their own health risks, with indicators that make sense both to science and to the Traditional Councils.
One person, one plant, the whole cycle.
In Maya medicine, healing follows a full cycle. A person looking for help meets a Healer, who sees which plant will help. The seed of that plant is sown in a seed bank, grows in a nursery and a garden, is harvested and prepared with the Elders, and goes home as a remedy. Each step needs the others: the place, the plant, the person who knows it and the community that keeps the seeds. Green Health's places are built so that people can walk this cycle themselves.
Learning with each other
Two knowledge systems with much to teach each other.
Maya medicine and modern science learn more together than apart. Green Health creates the relationships, places and ways in where that learning happens, and where people of other cultures can find their way back to the healing knowledge of their own.
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The institute
IMMI
The Mesoamerican Institute of Indigenous Medicine, a Green Health initiative: where the Maya Knowledge System, its Traditional Councils, Healers and places come together, and where Indigenous peoples represent themselves.
Discover IMMI02
Learning
Knowledge to share
In 2016 the Traditional Councils first set their knowledge down on paper: a book with 67 knowledge holders as its authors. Talks, and a design studio at ETH Zurich for IMMI's medicinal garden.
Science and learning03
Modern science
Research and measurement
Maya and modern researchers work on equal footing, with Traditional Councils and knowledge holders as co-leaders. Safety work, and measurement of biodiversity and community health with the communities' own indicators.
For research partners04
The network
Places that learn together
Shared platforms and one organization, so that places learn from each other while each stays sovereign. Other places and institutes can join on common standards and keep their own governance.
How we workThe places
Where the work takes place.
Piedra Parada, Guatemala City
IMMI Muxux
The first anchor of the network. From 2027, seed and plant nurseries, a garden for food and nutrition, and a herbarium that gives the plant collections one secure home.
Petén
IMMI Petén
In the subtropical forest, stewarded by the Releb'aal Saq'e' Council. Community nurseries grow native medicinal and forest species here, and the Ajilonel School for new Healers is planned.
On the land of others
Green Health Plots
Families in Petén already regenerate their land with plants from the community nursery. Landowners can join the same way: they keep their land, and share the plants, stewardship and infrastructure of something bigger.
In the cities · in planning
City Gardens
A city park, perhaps in one of Guatemala City's ravines, could become a garden of native food and medicinal plants, open to everyone. City Gardens are in planning, with a municipality as partner.
The invitation
Come and learn with us.
Green Health grows through relationships. If you would like to be part of them, there are three ways to begin.
For researchers
Research partners
Research with Maya medicine on equal footing, with permission agreed before anything begins.
For research partnersFor organizations
Ecosystem partners
Foundations, NGOs, landowners, municipalities, companies and initiatives that want to build places, learning and care with us.
For ecosystem partnersFor everyone
Stay in touch
Write to us, or receive news from the work a few times a year.
Write to usWhat already exists
Trust, built over many years.
But mutual trust is not a given. It's something we build slowly. It's something that is lost very quickly if we are disrespectful. That's why this type of research cannot be pushed, cannot be forced.
Green Health stands on long-standing relationships and research with Maya Traditional Councils and knowledge holders. How we act is written down in a Codex of Principles and Conduct, rooted in Maya wisdom and approved by several Maya Traditional Councils and Ajq'ijab', Maya spiritual guides.