HURRICANE— Ofelia Mendoza has spent a lifetime following her intuition. “Trust yourself” is a mantra that’s guided her from childhood in a tiny Mexican village to running a wellness business at the gates of Zion.

In 2019 she launched Aztec Massage Clinic in Hurricane, an enterprise adding an exotic flavor to Southern Utah’s growing wellness scene. The aim of Aztec massage is to heal physical injuries and clear clients of mental trauma, which Mendoza, 47, said she believes are connected.

“We hold 95% of emotions in our body,” she said. “Aztec massage is a modality where we don’t just want to help people with injuries. We want to help with emotional and spiritual things, too.”

She starts by connecting with clients, tuning into their energy and any memories causing dysfunction.

“I always work together with them,” Mendoza said. “If I see they are sad, I clean their sadness and I clean my sadness.”

It sounds esoteric, but in practice, her sessions – in which she massages, manipulates and extends clients’ limbs and muscles – look pragmatic.

“The primary work I do is on the hips,” she said. “Normally, if you have pain in your neck, the problem comes from your hips. If you feel pain in your toes, the problem comes from your hips. If you release the hips, everything is so easy. But the work is deep.”

In Mexico there’s a tradition of lay healers known as curanderas, a small number of whom consider themselves witches.

“A lot of people tell me, you are like a witch,” Mendoza said. “I say, no, I am smart.”

A natural connection

Mendoza grew up in Las Juntas, a village in Jalisco consisting of five houses surrounded by cedar trees. Two rivers on each side of the village merge to form one large river, hence the town’s name, which means “together.”

“If I felt sad, I’d go under a tree or to the river, and I’d feel better,” she said. “I felt the connection. They have life too.”

Her family owned a ranch where they kept livestock and made cheese and other dairy products, which they sold at a little store. Mendoza’s paternal grandmother was a massage therapist and midwife.

“She’d see somebody and say, ‘Oh, you are going to have a girl. You’re going to have a boy.’ And she was always right,” Mendoza said. “So she had this intuition, like me.”

Her grandmother retired when Mendoza was young, so she never directly trained her granddaughter. Still, Mendoza said she believes her grandmother’s gifts were passed down to her through genetic memory.

“When I’d see my pets weren’t feeling well, I’d say, ‘Hey, what happened to you?’ I’d start to feel their body,” Mendoza said. “And it’s like, ‘Oh, he has a problem here.’ And I’d start to fix it.”

There was a one-room elementary school in town where Mendoza and a few other children were taught. At 12, she moved to the city so she could continue her schooling. By 14, she was working on people.

Her first such experience took place when she was planning to visit a nearby town and stopped by a friend’s house, asking her to come along. When her friend declined because her son was sick, Mendoza convinced her to come anyway, bringing the feverish boy along. She said she would give the boy a head massage and if he didn’t feel better, they’d take him to the doctor.

One acquaintance was driving, with Mendoza in the front passenger seat. Her friend and the child were in the back seat.

“I turned around and I started massaging his head and his hands,” Mendoza said. “I closed my eyes and said, ‘Oh, he’s OK.’ And he was OK.”

Slaying the dragon

Over time, Mendoza has learned to heed messages she says come from a sixth sense, both while healing and in her day-to-day life.

“I had a boyfriend who, when I met him, I saw a dragon eat me. I said, ‘This is not a good guy,'” she said. “Then I said, ah, I’m crazy. But always when I saw that guy, I remembered how the dragon ate me.”

One day, Mendoza decided to cut off the tumultuous relationship. As she broke up with him, she had a vision of the dragon taking her out of its mouth.

“I knew this happened to me because I didn’t follow my intuition,” she said. “Your other self, your higher self, knows everything and talks to you.

Mendoza found work as an accountant and in real estate and eventually bought a beachfront home. She also continued to help people with massage. Eventually, though, the activity of cartels escalated. Drug deals were undertaken in the parking lot adjacent to her home and innocent bystanders were killed in crossfire between the cartels and the police.

After her brother got on the wrong side of a local cartel, Mendoza’s home was robbed twice. She tried to shelter her brother through her business, but he was eventually killed. She decided to get her brother’s family out of the country to safety. She planned to stay in Mexico herself, until she got some advice from an unusual source.

“I talked to my brother many times,” Mendoza said. “When people pass away they look the same, but their body is less dense – it has more light and more energy. He said, ‘Ofelia, you are in danger. I want you to go.'”

When she failed to listen, her brother came to her daughter in a dream and repeated his message. Mendoza applied for asylum for her entire family. She was given permission to emigrate to the United States with her children, as was her deceased brother’s family and another sister-in-law.

Leaving it all behind

Mendoza had family living in Southern Utah. She did some research into the Beehive State and decided it was a good destination.

“It’s safe. The police protect the people and take care of everything,” she said. “And the people normally have good energy. They come to Utah because they are looking for a good, relaxing life. They’re looking for peace.”

Getting started in a new country wasn’t easy. Mendoza worked cleaning houses, staying first in a room and then a garage with her two kids. Then she met LaVerkin resident Louie Lundin. They felt a connection and, given it was winter and the garage was cold, he invited her to stay at his house.

At first she refused, but after two weeks he sent her a picture of his house, complete with a chimney. Mendoza took him up on his offer, bringing her kids along.

“Three months later, I said, ‘Okay, Louie, do you like living with me?’ He said, ‘Yes, I’m happy.’ I said, ‘Okay, we need to get married. If not, I’ll go back to Mexico because I don’t want to waste my time.’ He said ‘Yes.'”

Six years later, they are raising their combined family, which includes Mendoza’s daughter and son, 12 and 17, respectively, Lundin’s 16-year-old daughter and an 18-year-old foster son.

Lundin’s brother-in-law was familiar with Mendoza’s knack for healing. One day, he brought a friend who had a serious injury to her. She was happy to help relieve his pain but her husband was worried. He told her she could get in legal trouble, doing this kind of work from home. He suggested she go to Zion Massage College and get a license.

When Mendoza finished school, her husband surprised her by renting a room where she could work on clients.

“I said thank you very much for renting me a room, but I don’t like it. I want a big place,” Mendoza said. “He told me,’ Ofe, you don’t have the money.’ I told him, ‘I don’t care. I want a big place.'”

Eventually, she found a studio with several treatment rooms. She did an advertising blitz on social media, joining wellness groups ranging from Salt Lake to California. At first, her clients were mainly Spanish-speaking, but the business soon expanded. Lundin was surprised to learn most of the people seeking pain relief and rehabilitation from his wife were older construction workers.

Mendoza said it makes her feel fulfilled when she influences life-changing transformations. Shortly after Aztec Massage Clinic opened, a man from Ogden called. He was set to undergo surgery on his spine in three weeks and wanted to try a natural alternative first.

“The guy came, and I helped him. He didn’t get the surgery. And two weeks later he came and brought four people,” Mendoza said.

Other triumphs Mendoza reports include helping a woman with one leg longer than the other live pain-free and relieving a woman’s longstanding back issues by tapping into past-life trauma. Mendoza has achieved the American dream, but she remains ambitious.

“When we went to do our website, they asked me, what are your goals?” she recalled. “I said, ‘I want to be the best massage therapist in the world.'”

Passing on her knowledge

Mendoza has gathered a team of massage therapists who bring their own experience to the business but are also eager to learn Aztec massage. She looks for employees who have a natural sensitivity like Catrielle Funicum, who she met while attending Zion Massage College.

“I was always passionate about not just doing a foot massage but really helping people,” Funicum said. “I’m trying to learn her techniques, but it’s taken me a long time to wrap my head around it. You have to feel it in a tactile way and then energetically. It’s a different way of looking at the body than I was taught in school.”

Along with her intuition, Mendoza credits a strong will for her success.

“If someone told me to give up my abilities, I’d say no,” she said. “I’m very rebellious. I don’t care if they put me in a dark room and keep me all day in there … I want to help people. I want to feel free. And I want to feel power.”

Aztec Massage Clinic can be contacted at 435-218-6864 and is located at 4 S. 2600 W. in Hurricane.

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