YOUR MIND, BODY, AND HEART
FELICIA COCOTZIN RUIZ is an award-winning author and renowned curandera, living in Phoenix, Arizona. Her business name came to be after friends lovingly called her the “Kitchen Curandera”, as she was often found cooking and making remedies in her tiny kitchen.
Felicia has been featured on numerous platforms, including Food & Wine, Spirituality & Health, and on Padma Lakshmi's Taste The Nation streaming on Hulu. Felicia is also a lead instructor for the Herbal Academy, sharing herbal folk wisdom with a community of over 100K people. To learn more on how you can work with Felicia, or to schedule a healing session with her, visit the offerings tab HERE.
WHAT IS A CURANDERA? Curanderas are traditional healers, who carry knowledge of foods, herbs, and other cultural remedies working with the body, mind, and spirit. In curanderismo, it is believed that disease can be caused by psychological, physical, and spiritual factors, creating disharmony of the body, mind, or soul. Curanderas help bring people out of that diseased state and back into harmony with various remedies and little rituals. Curanderismo has been practiced throughout the Americas for over five hundred years, with each healer offering a unique skillset applying her natural gifts and training. Felicia’s own maternal great-grandmother was a curandera in northern New Mexico, where she caught babies, provided hands-on healing, and created herbal remedies for her community and family.
Felicia completed training as a massage practitioner from Bio-Link Therapeutic Massage Institute (1995), holds a certificate in holistic aromatherapy from the Southwest Institute of Healing Arts (1996), is a graduate of the T. Colin Campbell Plant-Based Nutrition Studies Program (2014), is a yoga nidra instructor certified by the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Center of Los Angeles (2017), a former restaurant owner, and is a lead educator at the Herbal Academy. Felicia is also a founding member of the Patiloni Collective, a South Phoenix healing collective dedicated to community education, healing, and wellness for a holistically healthy future.
Felicia was given the title of Curandera with a ceremony held in her honor by one of her maestras, Patricia Federico, in the spring of 2018.
Felicia’s first book, Earth Medicines: Ancestral Wisdom, Healing Recipes, and Wellness Rituals from a Curandera, is the winner of the 2022 Eating the West Award and the winner of the 2023 League of the United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) Book Award.
Felicia’s second book, Nana Lupita and the Magic Sopita, is an enchanting story that features the mystery of a grandmother’s secret recipe, a seek-and-find of healing plants, and bilingual words for young readers.