Since all Tzutujil shamans, myself included, understand that the human body contains the whole world, in order to cure disease or pain a shaman had to become a charmer of that world. A shaman had to become nature, not just an observer of nature… The highest shamanic ability was to keep your nature intact while surrounded by the goings-on of a human village.

(We become) mesmerized by our increased ablities and position in life until we are unable to remember where we really came from and what being alive on this earth really entails. All of my training made this vision so full that I began to remember having forgotten.

It was nature, wildness, this undomesticated spirit that fled when it got enslaved, insulted, maimed, beaten, or scared. This trespass on one’s personal nature or soul is what Mayan shamans considered the prime source of illness to humans.

— Martin Prechtel, Secrets of the Talking Jaguar