Mexican Sobadores: Massage & My Culture

Mo Ortega
Body and Spine
Published in
3 min readJun 25, 2018

The traditional practice of Sobadores, Massage Therapy, dates back generations and has survived colonization beyond the Mexican borders. While popular culture, westernized thinking and western medicine now see past the idea of massage being a status symbol of luxury; Mexican Sobadora’s hold on to our history of indigenous medicine.

Sobadores are practiced by both men and woman.

Sobadores treat soft tissue dysfunction and injury including muscles or connective tissue. The tools of a Sobadora’s trade are their hands and sometimes their voice raising in prayer or song. Traditional Sobadora’s treat both body and spirit. A Sobadora’s origin are village healers treating their community with knowledge passed down.

My choice of profession isn’t surprising considering my New Mexico and Mexico lineage of healers tracing back to farmers who lived off the land and the Rio Grande. My ancestors way of life and need for our own medicine brought on by no hospitals in close proximity and an inability to afford them. Massage Therapy kind of chose me before I fully understood my family history.

My first experience with body work truly did start with my family. As a child I was pestered by terrible earaches and so my mother would ear candle my sore ears to take my pain away. When I slept wrong on a stiff neck my father would roll the skin on my back. When I tweaked my muscles, my aunt would fire cup them using a penny.

My massage training in Thailand led me to the realization that even though Thailand was literally on the other side of the globe, they shared a similar healing system of Mexican Sobadores. This includes:

  • Massage
  • Herbs
  • Balms and Liniments
  • Acupressure
  • Prayer
  • Ritual
  • Divination

The thought of massage being a practice of universal healing which connects all cultures fascinates me. Evidence of Massage Therapy being used as a medicine and cross infusing cultures is not only evident in both Asia and North America, Africa but Europe as well. Galen and Hippocrates writing extensively on prescribing massage as medicine.

Much indigenous medicine was influenced by migration or shift in population. Slave trade with colonization mixed and morphed indigenous medicine all over the world. Evidence of African Indigenous medicine and Asian medicine in Mexico’s indigenous practices are obvious and still influential. Spanish European Saints are commonly used in prayers of Sobadores and statues of Ganesha, a Hindu God can be found in Mexico.

Massage Therapy, a form of healing that dates back to several cultures around the world, is now gaining credibility among other health care professions.

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Mo Ortega
Body and Spine

Over 20 years of medical massage and skin care expertise!