The Coyolxauhqui Imperative: Dismemberment and Sacred Reintegration in Decolonial Psychiatry

The Coyolxauhqui Imperative offers a decolonial framework for reimagining trauma and healing in psychiatric practice by drawing on the Aztec myth of Coyolxauhqui's dismemberment and celestial transformation. Challenging Western biomedical assumptions of linear recovery and pathologization of fragmentation, this paradigm centers cultural epistemologies of nepantla (liminal space), conocimiento (embodied truth-telling), and mythic temporality (cyclical reintegration). Through critical analysis of Nahuatl cosmology, Gloria Anzaldúa's theoretical expansion, and contemporary ritual practices, the model reconceives psychological crises as sacred processes of disintegration and reassembly. We delineate theoretical foundations, clinical applications (including narrative pharmacology, ritual reassembly, and decolonial charting), and policy implications that foreground communal re-membering over individual symptom suppression. The Imperative advances an integrative praxis that honors fragmentation as generative, privileges cultural sovereignty, and undermines psychiatric coloniality. Our interdisciplinary synthesis establishes pathways for culturally resonant assessments, participatory methodologies, and land-based healing initiatives. By repositioning fragmentation as luminous, this work invites psychiatry to adopt borderlands healing practices that valorize ancestral wisdom, collective narrative sovereignty, and ritual space-holding.