Mayan Healing in the heart of the Mexican Caribbean Jungle
Abuelo Antonio Oxte is a traditional healer, spiritual guide, and steward of sacred knowledge
Born in the ancestral territory of the Maya on the Yucatán Peninsula, he is a traditional healer, spiritual guide, and steward of sacred knowledge who has devoted his life to preserving and revitalizing ancestral practices and ecological consciousness.
Initiated into the traditional healing arts by his grandmother from a young age, he inherited the practice of Pudziya. This sacred Mayan therapeutic massage restores energetic balance, physical integrity, and spiritual memory.
The Pudziya, rooted in breath, prayer, and touch, is at the heart of his healing work and continues to be offered as a ceremonial pathway to wholeness.
“I am you, and you are me.”
Traditional Maya ethical greeting
Abuelo Antonio’s Youth
Abuelo Antonio undertook a profound journey of pilgrimage across the American continent. Over a span of more than thirty years, he walked from Mexico to Brazil, traveling through mountains, forests, and river basins in search of spiritual knowledge and intercommunal wisdom. His path brought him into relationship with diverse ancestral traditions, including the Santo Daime of the Brazilian Amazon, where he encountered sacred plant rituals oriented toward universal consciousness and divine communion. He also studied with the Cotji people of Colombia, others, integrating a transcontinental lineage of healing and cultural resilience that deepens the foundation of his work.
Upon his return to the Yucatán, Abuelo Antonio dedicated himself to the creation of a sanctuary for healing and ancestral remembrance. Located within the Maya Bioregion, this 130-hectare protected reserve is home to a diversity of native species, medicinal plants, ceremonial altars, and two sacred cenotes—natural freshwater formations regarded in Mayan cosmology as portals to the underworld and sites of profound purification. Over the course of more than twenty-five years, the land has been carefully cultivated and tended, becoming a living model of regenerative ecology and spiritual restoration.
The Universal Mayan Healing Center
The sanctuary, known as The Universal Mayan Healing Center, is founded on a way of life rooted in reverence, discipline, and cosmological alignment. Central to the daily rhythm of the space are practices of vegetarianism, intermittent fasting, silence, and meditation. These disciplines are not presented as dogma but as tools for deepening awareness, restoring balance, and honoring the cycles of nature and body. Silence, in particular, is cultivated as a sacred mode of listening—to oneself, to the land, and to the voices of the ancestors that still speak through wind, fire, water, and stone.
Visitors to the sanctuary are immersed in a healing environment guided by ancestral Mayan practices, including temazcal (sweat lodge), plant-based cleansings, energy realignment, ritual offerings, sacred storytelling, and the transmission of spiritual cosmology. Each retreat or ceremonial encounter is designed to support an inward journey of remembrance, humility, and connection. Abuelo Antonio’s work invites guests not only to heal symptoms, but to remember who they are within the living fabric of creation.
Nutrition & Gastronomy at Abuelo Antonio’s Kitchen
Nutrition at the sanctuary is aligned with its spiritual and ecological commitments. Meals are strictly vegetarian, prepared with ingredients harvested from the land or sourced through conscious, local exchange. The culinary experience honors ancestral Mayan food practices, using techniques and knowledge passed down through oral traditions. Seasonal fruits, herbs, fermented preparations, and ceremonial broths are served with intention, embodying food as medicine and as offering. Eating is understood as an act of communion, grounded in simplicity, gratitude, and awareness.
The Animals Rescue & Refugee
The sanctuary is also a refuge for animals, who are treated not as human possessions or subordinates but as elder brothers—sentient beings who hold memory, teach presence, and share in the sacred duty of life. Dogs, cats, ducks, chickens, cows, and deer move freely across the land, forming a nonverbal web of companionship and spiritual alliance. These relationships are grounded in a deep love for life in all its forms and in the Mayan understanding that every being, animate and inanimate, carries a spirit and voice that must be honored.
International efforts and Organizations
In addition to the healing and spiritual dimensions of the space, Abuelo Antonio plays a vital role in regional and international networks committed to cultural resurgence, ecological defense, and peacebuilding. He is an active participant in the Región Maya, an interbioregional initiative promoting the recognition and unity of the Maya civilization beyond geopolitical borders. He collaborates with CODADEPOA, an organization that supports the defense of Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities, and with the Four Worlds International Institute, which works toward planetary healing through the application of ancestral wisdom in contemporary contexts.
Multi Cultural Gatherings
Throughout the year, the sanctuary hosts a variety of gatherings, aligned with lunar and solar cycles, equinoxes, solstices, and intentional themes of collective transformation. These events include ceremonial convocations, healing retreats, intergenerational storytelling, workshops on Mayan herbalism, sacred nutrition, cosmology, and rites of passage. Far from touristic or commercial in character, these gatherings form part of a long-term cultural and spiritual process that reweaves memory, dignity, and planetary kinship.
The Mayan Region
Situated within the Maya Bioregion—a geographic, ecological, and cultural territory that transcends modern national boundaries—this sanctuary is a living node in a broader movement for ancestral continuity and biocultural restoration. The Maya Bioregion is home to dozens of living languages, ceremonial centers, and communities that uphold a cosmology of balance, reciprocity, and sacred relationship with the Earth. Within this context, Abuelo Antonio’s work is both deeply local and globally resonant, offering a grounded and embodied response to contemporary crises of disconnection and fragmentation.
Collaborations
Those interested in engaging with the sanctuary—whether through retreats, collaborative projects, or community support—are invited to do so with humility and commitment. All visits are by reservation and require cultural orientation in advance to ensure mutual respect and alignment. Contributions, partnerships, and alliances are welcomed in support of the sanctuary’s long-term mission to protect sacred territory, transmit ancestral knowledge, and contribute to a planetary culture of peace, care, and regeneration.
At a time when many are searching for meaning, healing, and direction, the life and work of Abuelo Antonio Oxte illuminate a path that is not new, but ancient: a path rooted in listening, relationship, discipline, and love for all beings. In this sacred land, visitors are not merely guests—they are participants in a collective remembering of what it means to live in harmony with life itself.