Student Spotlight
Jaime Mejia, Candidate for Doctor of Naturopathy
“Pura vida! Nature is health, and life
is good.”
After
many years of working in Costa Rica as a high school English teacher and
then as a university professor teaching English as a second language,
Jaime Mejia Ramirez decided to officially change his life by simply reclaiming
life’s highest wisdom that he learned as a child. The wise teacher
recalls how many opportunities and challenges persistently nudged him
to follow this natural passion.
In 1999 he was invited to the third Ibero-American Natural Health Congress in Venezuela, and a group of American medical doctors invited him to teach seminars on his favorite subject: medicinal plants.
In the coming months, Jaime found himself explaining and commenting on herbs’ natural magic so often that he soon felt it was meant for him to seriously study naturopathy. “This way,” he says with a smile, “scientific data could come dancing with my heart’s understanding of the power of herbs.”
The only problem, he said, was access to a formal education in this field. “I searched for years, finding no college or university in Latin America that suited my requirements. When I read about the Clayton courses and investigated their top-notch distance learning methodology, it sounded right. In these first two years, the coursework and the whole process remains amazingly interesting, motivating and challenging.”
Jaime’s good words and good heart continue spreading far and wide – with media interviews, teaching assignments, and as author of books and e-books in English and Spanish, on the “sanative” or restorative plants that help people to feel better and live confidently, with assurance.
“Illness is our chance to grow and change, rehabilitating mind and soul.”
Jaime believes that the closer we live to nature, the closer we are to health. Nothing, he adds, is more powerful than the healing effects of the four natural elements and their fruits – air, water, fire and earth. “I feel my mission is being accomplished,” he says, “once I see the (client’s) face relax and their eyes become hopeful.”
“Since all of these dimensions are so strongly interrelated, the minute you can touch one of them, that’s when you reach all the beautiful complexities, for both of us in the healing relationship and for our stronger energies that move out and beyond.
“And so our focus always remains on health, of course, not disease or treatment or medicine. My family and grandparents used medicinal herbs daily, for cooking and for helping family members and others in our community. Usually I can find very little need for synthetic products to work out miracles. I invite others to believe in their body’s own ability to rebalance itself, with their own help and any necessary lifestyle changes.
“I believe natural healing to be God’s will and His gift for each of us.”
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