Slow Down And Receive The Earth’s Medicines With Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz

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Our fast-paced lives can make it difficult to perceive the healing properties of the very elements that surround us: in water, fire, air, and earth. Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz, the author of “Earth Medicines”, invites us to slow down and receive healing from the earth and its elements. Today, she shares recipes and insights that shed new light on the ancient healing that we may be overlooking which is ubiquitous, if not right under our very noses.

 

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Episode Transcript

Within the below transcript the bolded text is Hilda Labrada Gore and the regular text is Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz.

What if the very herbs and foods that grow in your area have the capacity to heal you from water to pine needles to the very Earth itself? This is episode 553 and our guest is Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz. Felicia is a curandera, author, and herbalist educator at the Herbal Academy. She invites us to slow down and look around at the healing elements that surround us. These may be things that you were overlooking in our fast-paced world. Felicia describes her own relationship to the Earth in our conversation along with the elements in how to make the most of what is right under our very noses.

Before we get into the conversation, I want to invite you to follow the Wise Traditions on the platform of your choice. We’re available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, Google Play, and all the places. You can also download the podcast app to your iOS or Android device. Put Wise Traditions in the search bar and you will find us. Plus, we are on YouTube, so you can listen and watch at the same time at @TheWestonAPrice. Check it out for this episode and more resources.

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Welcome to Wise Traditions, Felicia.

How are you?

Taking A Step Back To Pursue Traditional Healing

It’s good to see you. I’m doing great. I’m so happy we got to connect. I received your book, Earth Medicines and I was blown away by its beauty and how profound it was. Felicia, I want to ask you. When was your a-ha moment? When did you realize that everything you needed for well-being was right here?

Back in 2009, I thought I had an autoimmune disease. It turns out, I was very stressed out and working far too much. Something triggered inside of me that I needed to be outside. I needed to go into the water, sleep better, and just reconnect. I felt like I unplugged, reset, and plugged myself back in, and it included everything that was connected to the elements.

You thought you had an autoimmune condition?

Yes, I was a restaurant owner for many years and I was going through a divorce at the time. I was managing this business by myself. I was working so many hours inside on my feet. I was just wiped out, to be quite frank, and emotionally torn. My body didn’t know what to do. I felt like I did have a lot of inflammation happening in my body as a result from all of the stress. The doctors were thinking maybe I had lupus. All these other things, I was being tested. Everything was coming back fine, but something inside of me was like, “Felicia, you need to reset your body,” and that’s what I did.

How did you start? What did you do first?

I started by going to the river, which is about 45 minutes from my home and that was my first reintroduction not having a lot of time when I was at a restaurant. I did have time to be hanging out at the river and doing these things. It was so intentional to put my feet in that water and to allow that water. It was healing. From there, I was intentionally standing outside. It was all with the elements.

Did you let the restaurant go? I’m imagining there are other readers who are like, “I’m stressed out. I’m doing all these tests. I’m getting results that I’m fine, but I know I don’t feel fine.” They can’t just quit their day job. What did you do? Did you still have the restaurant?

I call it divine timing. At the time, it was extremely painful but Phoenix was the hardest hit city in the country as far as that great recession was in motion. I had to let the restaurant go in 2010 and it was all about that time that I took a step back and asked myself, how do I want to move forward in life? I was in my late 30s and my body just felt wiped out. I feel better now in my 50s physically than I did looking back years ago.

Was that the beginning of embracing yourself as a curandera? You went from a restaurant owner to a healer.

I went from a healer to a restaurant owner. I started my work in traditional healing back when I was 21, I believe. I was already on that path. The way that my journey just unfolded was, I have a love for cooking real food and I had a restaurant with my then ex-partner. I don’t want to shine a bad light on all the people that have that job, but everyone that I have talked to who is a restaurant owner and they’re working. They are making the food. They’re not just the owner. It’s not this glamorized thing. You are in charge of so many things. For me, at that time, I do look back and think it was divine timing. I don’t think I would be here if I hadn’t had that reset.

That’s so beautiful. Do you think in a way then you were avoiding your destiny by being a restaurant or was it just part of your transformation?

It was part. In fact, that’s how I got the name of my business now. People would go into the restaurant. It was in an old 40s home. We were busy. It was a great space. I was already known as a healer in my community, and then people started calling me a kitchen because I was in this kitchen always making all of the home cooked food and things like that. It was just another extension of all of the different things I was doing.

Achieving Natural Healing Through Earth Medicines

This brings us to your book Earth Medicines. I love that it’s not just a recipe book, Felicia, but there’s rituals in there. It’s steeped in tradition. What made you realize, “I want to do more than a recipe book here?”

I did take a look in the mirror and recognize that I was putting myself in a box as simply being known as a person who was cooking with healing foods when I was dipping into my spiritual toolkit. I was looking into my ancestors for guidance. What happened is when I got that book deal, it allowed me to express all parts of me. As one of my Maestra said, “It was my opportunity to come out of the curandera closet at that time.

That’s so funny. I’ve never heard of curandera closet. Why would you be in there in the first place? Come on, just spill it all. Tell me what you mean.

For a lot of people of the same background as I am, I’m indigenous. I’m a Chicana with Mexican descent. A lot of people would associate curanderas as brujas as a witch. I don’t mind being called that now but many years ago, that was a derogatory thing and somehow it got a bad name. Now, it’s so beautiful that people that are younger than me coming out of their own little curandera closet is very empowering to say I’m taking control of my health, and the health of my family and my home.

I’m helping my community. That’s something that skipped maybe a generation or two, depending on the people where their community and their family is because we had to rely so much on. What I’m saying is, we had to put it underground. We were not able to practice these traditional ways without being looked down upon.

Felicia, what do you think are the factors that made it so look down upon I would say?

I would say 100% colonization. That’s true. I feel that many of our beautiful food ways, our spiritual practices, and me not knowing our native language, all of those things were by design. Many of those things did go underground because we weren’t allowed to practice them. Now, time has evolved and people are indigenizing. We’re claiming those practices back.

I laughed when you said that because it surprised me. What I thought you were going to say is we’ve become so pharmaceutically dependent that anything alternative, which should be mainstream is considered alternative and odd, and akin to witchcraft. What God has put on this green earth is healing but people look at it as strange that we turn to plants instead of pills. That’s what I thought you were going to say. It’s interesting that you said colonization.

What you just expressed and what I said is two peas in a pod. It’s related.

You told me before we started rolling that you felt a connection to your ancestors right from birth. Can you explain what you meant by that?

In my family, we always had an ancestor altar. We would prepare food for our loved ones during Día de los Muertos. We would go out of our way to make sure the spirits, the ones in our family, were taken care of and remembered. It was always something that was deeply ingrained in how I grew up.

You even have some of this information about the rituals related to these altars in your book Earth Medicine.

In Earth Medicine, I share for people who feel disconnected to their ancestors or maybe they are just disconnected to their lineage in general. It’s like how to set up an ancestor altar without culturally appropriating another person’s lineage. It’s just very much wrapped around the four elements and ways that they can do that so they could feel closer and work with them.

It seems, to me, we all have a background. We all have our ancestors that we want to connect to and probably, every culture had traditions and perhaps they’ve gotten lost. What you’re inviting people to do, is to explore how they could do that and how they can even connect with the elements in the modern world.

I think that no matter who I talk to, they might not know a grandmother, a mother or an aunt in their immediate family but I know 100% in my heart. I know that every family has had somebody who was a healer, new plants, worked with plants, food, the animals, and was connected. Not only because of the modern day that we are in, a lot of those ways have been lost. It’s not just for people that are indigenous to this land like I am that are all so reclaiming our ways. It’s for everyone who feels that they could benefit from those ancestral practices.

Receiving Healing Through The Element Of Water

That’s why you wrote your book. You’re opening the doors wide. Let’s explore how we can connect more with nature and the four elements. Tell us what the four elements are and then I’d like to talk about maybe a recipe and a ritual in each category that’s especially meaningful to you.

I want to first backtrack, though, because you said something that gave me a ping. That is, I don’t share with people how they can connect with nature because I want to remind everyone that we are part of nature. You’re just learning how to connect with yourself. I love sharing that with people because it’s very empowering when you feel like you were just part of nature. You’re not having to go find it. We’re part of it.

You are part of nature. You do not have to go find it.

I broke the chapters down into Water, Air, Earth and Fire. I chose to start with water because that’s where we begin in our mother’s wombs. Water was a very special element for me to work with because I live land locked here in the Sonoran Desert. As I said earlier, going to the river was so healing for me and being in such a huge city, having to drive out, go to the river was almost like a little ritual.

When we can’t go, is that why you recommend it? I was looking in the book about the hydrosol and the different ways in which you bring the water to you.

Yes, exactly. I always suggest to everyone, if you can’t get out to water then do your best to find some spring water that’s as close to where you live. Use that to work with your water in a ritual way or even to anoint your home with that energy of spring water. Bring that vitality. That would be one way.

What recipe from that water section stands out to you, Felicia?

What everyone shares with me is fun because I loved making this one. It’s the water medicine like an agua fresca, but it’s made with the cactus pads, the nopal. I created a very vibrant green fresh drink made with basil and lime juice. It’s just very refreshing. It’s full of fiber. It’s good for your skin and your blood sugar. It’s ultra-hydrating for your body.

That makes sense because the nopal or the cactus is holding water. It’s like a little reservoir of water out in deserts, isn’t it?

It’s cooling. A lot of people, I would say, maybe like ten years ago, started popping up in different places, which is an ancestral food.

This is going to sound odd because I know you live in the desert, but I was going to say where can you get it? Can people just go and get a little cactus by the side of the road and chop it down? How does it work?

If you know the people where you’re chopping it down because it’s a drought-tolerant plant. It’s going to be doing all right in the desert but if it’s being watered, then it’s going to be more hydrating, more fleshy. Honestly, I have a nopal cactus growing here at my home, but I go to our Mexican grocery store and buy mine there.

The Benefits Of Eating Locally Produced Food

That makes sense, too. I have to ask because you are reminding me that we’re all a part of nature and we’re all connected to it. What do you think of the idea of eating and conducting rituals more locally? What I mean is I live in a different part of the United States where no nopales no cacti grow. Should I be having a nopal drink?

It’s part of your DNA. You mentioned you were of Mexican descent. I think that would make your cells happy. It would make your ancestors happy that their way of eating hasn’t been forgotten. I’m a big believer in eating as local as possible. However, that’s difficult at certain times of the year. I’m here in the city, so I think that when you tap into foods that your ancestors ate. It might not be a very local food because now we live all over the world.

I think about this a lot because some people suggest that the healthiest diet is the local one. When I eat an avocado or a banana, I’m so happy. My dad is from Cuba and my mom is from Mexico. Those foods come from those places, closer to the Equator and so forth. You’re right, they make my cells happy.

I talk about food so much. I have met people that, let’s say we’re from Sicily, and the nopal travelled back to Italy, and now it’s growing all over different parts of the Mediterranean. Even though they’re not of Mexican descent, their grandparents and great grandparents have eaten it. It’s like an ancestral food for them in a very different context.

Do you know what’s fascinating? I was talking just this past fall with this amazing man who was saying, “All traditions change with time.” Which is funny because we’re Wise Traditions over here. We’re all about ancestral wisdom but it’s not static. It’s dynamic. I think that’s what I hear you saying when it comes to the nopal and maybe other rituals and traditions as well.

The practice of being a curandera is called Curanderismo. When I give talks on that, I always share with people that it’s a living tradition, which means that we are practicing holistic ways of keeping ourselves well. However, it’s also changing because it began as a survival practice. Now that we have survived many forms of genocide and colonization as I mentioned, we’re implementing it in a way that might not look exactly like it did 500 years ago, but it’s more fiend. It’s evolving and changing, but it’s still rooted in those basic principles.

Receiving Healing Through The Element Of Earth

Let’s talk a little bit about Earth. What significance does our connection with the earth have? How can rituals, remedies and recipes help move us in that direction?

I don’t necessarily have a recipe that comes to mind, but what I love to share with people and I’m sure your readers are well aware of all of this. I feel that everyone long ago we were either barefoot. We were in sandals made of deer hides. We were in fiber shoes. It wasn’t until rubber came along that we are not touching the earth or connecting, perhaps is a better way, in the same way. I love telling my own clients that come to see me that feel like maybe they’ve lost their foundation or maybe they feel disjointed.

I always ask them, “When was the last time you walked outside without any shoes?” Often they can’t remember. That’s one thing that I love to share with people. I love to get dirty. I don’t think dirty is a bad thing. I love having dirt on my feet. It means that was a good day or dirt on my hands was a good day. To see earth and dirt as this living energy that gets into your body and your skin.

You know Zach Bush and others have promoted products that include fulvic acid and other earth elements like clay that they suggest we should ingest. When we’re trying to stop our three-year-old from putting their hand to their mouth after they touch the dirt, maybe that’s the wrong thing to do. That’s what I hear you saying. Touching the earth is good for us at any age and stage.

My daughter is now in her twenties, but when she was 2 or 3 years of age, I would let her go play outside and get dirty. That was so important to me because that’s how I grew up, playing outside and getting dirty. I felt that she had a strong immune system for being around a bunch of toddlers that were her age. I understand where it comes from, but a lot of parents are just like, “Don’t get dirty. You just got that new outfit.” I just let her get dirty.

Receiving Healing Through The Element Of Air

I love it so much. Now, let’s move on to Air. What’s the significance of air in our lives?

It’s the element that we have no choice but to have an exchange with every day. We can choose if we want to go step on mama Earth. We can choose to go to the ocean or to the river. We can’t choose whether or not we want to use air or not. It’s just happening. That said, in my own home, I’ve always been known to have so many plants in my house. I grew up with a lot of plants. My dad had a big green thumb. We were always growing so many things.

If we want to experience Mother Nature, we can choose which plots of land or bodies of water to visit. But we cannot choose the air to breathe.

This is making me remember. One time, I went to a woman’s home who wanted me to bless and smudge her home. She was having a lot of sadness in her life. When I went there and looked around, her whole house was full of plants but they were all artificial plants. That was my first indication that could be contributing to her air quality there. She had all the plants. Visually, it looked like she had plants but they weren’t filtering the air. They weren’t bringing that life to her space.

Speaking of that, in the air section of your book. You had a recipe for pine needle tea. Is that right?

Yes. My whole family is from New Mexico, so the pinyon tree is a very important tree that we use for medicine and so many different things. I just share how to make pine needle tea. It’s good for respiratory health.

That makes me think of our friends in California who’ve had a lot of wildfires and so forth. What would you recommend for them when the air that they breathe is thick with smog, soot and ash?

When we had that last fire in January 2025, one thing that I shared on my social media was just reminding people how simple it is to get a big pasta pot like a stock pot and fill it with water and find whatever type of lung supportive herbs you have. Whether they were fresh or dried, and to put them in the pot. You’re working with water and with air because this steam would release all of the little chemical compounds. Let’s say from lavender, rosemary, thyme, or whatever they had access to. It would permeate the air. It not only supported their lungs but it was supporting their mental well-being because the air was scented with all of these beautiful aromatics.

I’m sure the other smells in the air were heightening their cortisol, making them tense, and putting them in a different mode.

I have a family that’s in California, in the LA area. From what I understand, there’s a lot of plastic molecules in the air and all the other chemicals. This would be something that would be at least inside contained in your home like lung support.

Receiving Healing Through The Element Of Fire

Now, let’s go on to the last element which is fire. Talk to us about fire and our need for it now. Most of us don’t even see fire much anymore. The kind that we want. Not the kind that’s consuming some of the land in California.

I say that in the book that with one little flame, you can have a big space for hope and optimism in your life like lighting a candle for someone or for yourself and yet, it can consume a whole forest. It’s just all about transformation. In my home, I’ve never loved bright lights. I love sunlight. Since I can remember, I love lighting candles just when the sun goes down and seeing my way around the house. I have so many candle holders all over. I’m always picking them up. I love beeswax ones. I love that smell, but I try to use those just so I can also see that glowing orange flame at nighttime.

 

I’ve heard that there’s something about even just watching the fire that gets us back into that parasympathetic mode. This is why maybe there are profound conversations around campfires and we associate candlelight with romance. There’s something about it. Even the way the fire or the flame is consuming the wood or the wick. I’ve heard it’s akin to the Fibonacci sequence, which trees have. It’s like this sequence in nature that’s also healing and important.

I’ve not heard that one, but I love the idea that that’s how it is. For me, having the handle flickering, it’s almost like meditative. You’ll be sitting there with a candle reading and then you look at the candle. All of a sudden, you realize you’ve been staring at the candle flame for a few minutes. It takes you into a very beautiful space. I don’t know what the brain wavelength is when that happens.

That’s such a beautiful reminder. We don’t have to have a fireplace. We can just light a little candle wherever we are. For those who are in the biohacking space. The reason we do red light after the sun goes down is to achieve in our modern world something akin to what our ancestors would have had. They wouldn’t have had the bright light you were mentioning earlier. They only would have had a firelight likely. We’re trying to imitate that by wearing blue bloggers, so everything looks red or by having red light bulbs in our homes.

Yes, I love that.

I noticed in that section of the book, you had a recipe like some ginger fire, honey, chews. Tell me about that.

I wanted people to not just see the fire in its actual physical form like we were talking about with the fireplace, campfire, and candle. I also wanted them to think about it in an abstract way because of traditional healing practices around the world. We also work with our digestive fire. We talked about creative fire, passion, and things like that. I love the flavor of ginger. I would buy like these ginger chews, especially if I was traveling. It also helps with any travel sickness, so I made them with fresh ginger. They do help with your digestion but they taste good too.

Why Going Fast Does Not Make Us Healthier

Do we have to be great cooks to pick up your book Earth Medicines?

I don’t think so. The thing about the cooking parts, I would say it’s cooking in a clay pot like a pot of beans. I wanted the emphasis to be on working with earth and so that was working with a clay pot. Anyone can cook a pot of beans, but what I wanted to share in the book was that everything’s so fast. Everyone wants everything so fast and I remind everyone just as I said at the beginning of the conversation. It was divine timing what happened to me.

I had to slow down. I had to be intentional. I brought a rhythm of life back to myself. That wasn’t because I was making beans in my Instant Pot, which I don’t have. I want people to recognize that all of the beauty and the magic happens when you slow down. I know that not everyone can do that but the recipes in the book are very much in tune with slow living, slow cooking. I want people to step back and recognize that maybe everything that’s fast is contributing to the stress.

That’s such a good point. We are on such a treadmill. We are all moving so quickly. It’s DoorDash. Notice it’s not like door turtle delivery. Everything is so fast.

It’s an Instant Pot. It’s a pressure cooker. Everything’s fast and hard. There’s something so beautiful about soaking your beans and letting the pot warm up slowly. Maybe it’s not for a weekday dinner. Maybe this is something that has to happen on the weekend, but then triple the amount and have beans for the whole week and knowing that you were working with the element of Earth. It’s a beautiful way to introduce that into your life.

 

Tell me what you think of this idea, Felicia. The truth is, for all of our conveniences we’re not any healthier. We’re not saving time. If we slow down to make a meal, it would nourish us better than if we just pushed a button and got DoorDash because we would still be moving at this frenetic pace.

I love that you brought that up because I talked about that often about how we want everything so fast. There’s something absolutely special that our children don’t experience now. That’s even having a letter arrive in the mail. It’s like magic now to get something that feels from snail mail. It’s like we’ve taken out all of those beautiful surprise moments and that also happens in the kitchen with food.

That’s such a beautiful way of putting it. We’re allowing the process to be part of our rhythms.

It’s a big ingredient into our pot of well-being.

When you were mentioning the clay pots, I remember I had a niñera like a nanny in our family. She would use the clay pot to soak the beans in for sure. That was a beautiful tradition in our home.

I shared in my book that when people soak their beans overnight, I know some people say, “Don’t do it.” It’s the way that I was always taught, but I remind them that the bean water that you soaked your beans in to water your plants with that because your plants will thrive. They love what was left in the bean water.

Get Enough Sleep And Turn Off Everything

That’s awesome. I don’t remember my nanny doing that, but that’s a great tip for all of us. Felicia, this has been a wonderful conversation. I would say it’s even just an introduction to a different way of living in our modern world. It’s slower paced, more connected with ourselves, and with nature and even our ancestors. I found this amazing. Now, I want to ask you the question I love to pose at the end. If the reader could just do one thing and maybe just take one step to improve their health. What would you recommend that they do?

Go to bed earlier. I do. I see so many clients and they’re just surviving on six hours of sleep. They’ve convinced themselves that that’s all that their body needs but when I see them, they look depleted. That’s such a wonderful thing to try to just get your body to bed, turn off everything, and get adequate sleep for your cells to rejuvenate while you’re sleeping and wake up. You’ll look more youthful and feel more youthful. You just feel good, and it’s free. It does take a little bit of discipline if you’re not, which is what I like to say in early birds.

Get adequate sleep. Turn off everything at night and allow your cells to rejuvenate.

I used to be a night owl but I’ve changed. I have an early bird certification now, which I love, just because I started going to bed earlier. It’s not that hard, but it does take some discipline.

It might be like an adjustment to say, “I’m going to start training myself to go to bed half an hour earlier and just see how my body feels.” Don’t jump full in and you’re in bed. It’s going back to what we said about the light. I wonder how many night owls we had a long time ago because that would have been expensive to be a night owl. You would have to burn a lot of candles back then.

That’s right. That’s such a good point. Automatically, when the sun goes down, everyone starts yawning but then they turn on the lights and they get a second win. That’s such a good point. Felicia, it has been a joy. Thank you so much for joining us. On behalf of the Weston A. Price Foundation, we’re grateful.

Thank you so much, Hilda.

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Our guest was Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz. Visit her website at Kitchen Curandera to learn more. I want to invite you to follow this show on the platform of your choice. Remember, we also have an app that you can find on your iOS or Android device. Put Wise Traditions in the search bar and then share your favorite episodes with your friends. Share the links from our website or from our YouTube channel. Wherever you can find a show that has meant a lot to you will likely have an impact on your friend or family member as well. Thank you so much for reading, my friend. Stay well and remember to keep your feet on the ground and your face to the sun.

 

About Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz

Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz is an award-winning author, curandera, natural foods chef, and Lead Herbalist Educator at the Herbal Academy, contributing to courses and fostering community through educational offerings. Born and raised in the Sonoran Desert, where one-fifth of the desert’s flora are edible and medicinal, Felicia was deeply influenced by the women in her family who shared incredible herbal stories of healing, childbirth, food, and faith from their time growing up in northern New Mexico.

Keeping this living tradition alive for generations to come, Felicia now shares that ancestral knowledge, along with her own herbal magic, through storytelling, kitchen medicine, folk remedies, and more. Felicia is the author of the highly praised Earth Medicines: Ancestral Wisdom, Healing Recipes, and Wellness Rituals from a Curandera and the inspiring children’s book Nana Lupita and the Magic Sopita. Her work has been featured in Forbes, Food & Wine, Spirituality & Health, Martha Stewart, Healthline, and the popular Taste The Nation show with Padma Lakshmi, among many other publications and platforms.

As a Lead Herbalist Educator at the Herbal Academy, Felicia shares her sage wisdom, ancestral knowledge, and experiences with students through her contributions in course development, teaching, and supporting a suite of herbalism courses from beginner to advanced clinical levels. Felicia aims to foster engaging student community spaces by leading interactive classes, teaching in educational webinars and podcasts, and representing the Herbal Academy at various herbal conferences and events.

Felicia lives with her husband in Phoenix, Arizona, where she works with the sun, the moon, and the elements, offering medicine workshops and one-on-one healing sessions for her community.

 

Important Links

• Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz on LinkedIn
• Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz on Instagram
• Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz on X
• Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz on YouTube
• Herbal Academy
• Kitchen Curandera
• Earth Medicines
• Zach Bush

 

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