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Health and
Fitness
Complementary and Modern Medicine:
Strange Bedfellows?
by
Satis Shroff
 In the 80,000
hamlets of Nepal, there are over 400,000 shamans and traditional
healers, who have to some extent acquired the basics of modern medical
treatment through the Health Ministry.
The old tradition of the dhami-jhakri in which the fate of a
person can be influenced by appeasing the spirits is still intact in
Nepal. A séance provides the ill person a communication possibility
depending the nature of the illness. For the spirits (Geister), be they
rough or fine in their manifestations, belong to the everyday lives of
the tradition-conscious Nepalese and many other ethnic-peoples in the
northern and southern hemispheres of this globe.
Disease and conformity
The
traditional healers of Nepal are not only versed in the nature of
illnesses caused by spirits, demons, male and female witches, Gods and
Goddesses, but also diseases which are in conformity with
epidemiological studies and results. The usual diseases that are
mentioned by traditional healers are: diarrhea, coughs, pneumonia,
heart-maladies, abdominal pain, pain in the joints and other less
specific symptoms like: headaches, body pain, nausea etc. Other commonly
mentioned diseases are: vomiting, worm-infections, pickles and boils,
carbuncles, cases of goiter in the hills (think of the Himalaya salt ads
in the west), different skin problems, tuberculosis, problems of the
urinary tract and menstrual disorders and anomalies.
In the past the shamans were not allowed to get rich through healing,
and the codex and ethics of the healers in the Himalayas were strict.
Today, the Nepalese shaman blesses a life-saving electrolyte solution
for the treatment of diarrhea and dysentery. The shaman has become
innovative in Nepal, and makes himself or herself socially useful by
ritualizing and selling anti-baby pills for a small financial
commission. This way, he or she helps Family planning, which is
supported by the government. The Nepalese government has raised the
status of the shaman by bestowing an official title upon him:
Practitioner of Traditional Medicine, with the condition that he or she
take part in medical and hygiene courses. ‘Traditional’ sounds better
than ‘complementary’ because shaman has a long tradition in Siberia,
Nepal and others parts of the world.
Sociological view
The position
of the shamans in the hamlets of Nepal is getting a certain amount of
recognition and importance, because he or she gathers new experiences
and acquires modern methods of healing, and in this way, the shaman uses
a combination of traditional and modern medicine. From a sociological
point of view, magic-o-religious healing plays a central and positive
role. The magic and faith in the healing powers of the shaman helps to
strengthen the group, tribe or caste by defining a common foe, and in
identifying the evil, invisible spirit that has been causing illness. In
this way, it is possible to control one’s own environment and the
immediate neighborhood and to influence it. Moreover, the healing ritual
of the shaman late into the night helps to sublime difficult somatic
Triebanspruche and to channel them in a socially acceptable and legal
way, without being stigmatized in the society as being abnormal or an
ill-person.
When you boil down the matter between traditional and modern medicine,
belief is in the eye of the beholder. If modern medicine doesn’t help,
complementary (traditional) therapy seems to do so, for instance in the
case of people struggling with long-term pain. Whereas the physician is
concerned with infections caused by fungi, bacteria and viruses, Nepal’s
Dhamis, Bijuwas, Bong-things and shamans are concerned with spirits,
demons, Gods and Goddesses and other invisible powers between Swarga
(Heaven) and Prithvi (Earth). The people in Nepal still have faith in
the practitioners of traditional medicine, despite the danger of being
stigmatized as being superstitious, anachronistic and backward. The
government has found out that even though Health Post have been set up,
the people living in the foothills of the Himalayas (Mittelgebirge)
still prefer ritual therapies from their shamans. The medically-trained
traditional healers can reach millions of Nepalese through a
well-developed strategy. Most of the Dhamis-Jhakris have shown that they
are open to new skills in health, population and family-oriented basic
knowledge. Moreover they were (and are) ready to give their acquired
modern knowledge to their respective communities in their hamlets.
Humane and empathetic: The traditional healer not only cures with modern
pharmaceuticals, but he or she imparts a cultural note to the therapy by
blessing the medicine in a ritual through the recitation of mantras or
prayer, which is indeed soft and humane, and the patient becomes a part
of the ceremony, and isn’t left alone like in a hospital. Traditional
(complementary) medicine has come to stay. It was there all the time in
different continents, and is an expression of care, humane-treatment,
softness (Sanftemedizin), dignity, respect and empathy for the ill
person. These are values that have dwindled in modern medicine’s pursuit
for rationalism, validity and science. Every time a patient enters a
physician’s clinic, he or she feels uneasy that the clock is ticking
away to his or her disadvantage. Time is money. More patients means more
money for the physician and the health insurance company. That leaves
little time and hope for the hapless, impatient patient.
The value of hope: The value of hope, which is an important resource in
different cultures and among traditional healers, is lost in modern
medicine. What was Florence Nightingale doing with her candle-light in
the bedsides and stretchers of her wounded soldiers in the Crimean War?
Was she giving them antibiotics, anti-viral drugs? No, she was giving
these forlorn souls a precious medicine named hope. But is traditional
medicine entirely based on hope? Certainly not. Traditional Chinese
medicine, Tibetan medicine, and the Indian subcontinent’s Ayurvedic
medicine, Unani medicine deploy among others pharmaceuticals botanical,
zoological and mineral extracts to cure the illnesses of millions of
people since time immemorial. So does modern medicine, which enjoys
perfect packaging and marketing and ads through the media. It’s the
catchy, convincing-sounding ad that makes people rush to the apothecary
to buy the pharmaceutical product that they’ve seen in TV or have heard
about from their relatives and friends, as is mostly the case in the
layman’s aetiology.
Modern medicine is a science because its experiments can be reproduced,
it is systematic and can adjust itself in combating new bacteria,
viruses and other disease causing microbes. But traditional or
complementary medicine is also learning new methods of treatment and
hospital hygiene.
Alone in 1980 Dr. Badri Raj Pandey et al trained more than 1000
traditional healers (Dhamis-Jhakris) in Nepal under the Family Planning
and Maternal Child Health Project (MCHP). Since there are more
traditional healers than physicians and paramedical personnel, the
traditional healers are an important resource for the family planning
and health organizations in Nepal. This study has revealed that the
traditional healers play an important role. They have a functional
network and they aren’t s so expensive as medical doctors. The
traditional healers are always ready to visit their patients, even
though it means walking through the better part of the day to treat the
patients. Physicians are reluctant to walk four to six hours to their
impoverished patients, and they’d rather be paid in currency notes
rather than with eggs, vegetables, or a little red rooster.
School medicine has to win the traditional healer as a resource and
ally, and not as concurrence, for the common aim of traditional and
modern medicine is to free the individual from his or her illness, and
provide an efficient and honest cure. The wellness and recuperation of
the patient should be the common goal and not rivalry. This target was
fixed by the Nepalese government and the shamans are now treated with
respect, asked for assistance and requested to take part in
therapy-workshops and medical training projects. Such workshops were
held in: Kanchanpur, Chandani municipality, Mahendranagar, Syangja and
Ilam in the past. It was explained that the project as such didn’t have
any intention to influence the healing methods or beliefs of the tribal
shamans. The participating shamans learned how to motivate the people of
their respective communities, family-planning and other health-promoting
measures.
Causality and logic: The shaman can differentiate the principle of
causality and logical thinking and communication. The shaman manifests
religion and the art of healing as a coexistence form, and is open for
new healing methods if it helps the patient. Likewise, there is a trend
on the part of physicians and psychotherapists to take on the shaman’s
healing methods. And to this end, there are universities that are
training therapists through the use of modern and traditional medicine
by inviting and bringing together traditional healers and modern
therapists, medical and nursing students and physicians.
Education as Intercultural therapist for 1269 Euro: Two German two
universities in Heidelberg and Munich have established themselves in the
service of traditional and modern medicine by offering workshops and
seminars by bringing practitioners of Traditional and Modern Medicine
together. It is a marriage between the two systems of medicine.
An advanced
international, intercultural and interdisciplinary education as a
therapist in Medican Anthropology is being made possible from 12th till
19th October 2007 by the Institute of Ethnomedizin and it costs 1269
euros. You can join the program at any stage. It is a global path for
health and healing and is organized by the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität
Munich. The program makes it possible for western therapists to take
part in a lively dialogue with authentic indigenous healers, shamans,
and teachers from all over the world.
For those interested in ritual healing methods in the world a seminar
was organized by the Südasien Institute, Heidelberg, Dept. of Ethnology
from 12.-16.March 2007. The program was available under:
www.sai.uni-heidelberg.de/abt/ETHNO/forschung/springschool.htm. How
does ritual healing work and what can we learn from it? Can and should
ritual healing be publicly integrated in the Heath Services? These were
the themes of the one-week seminar which showed the detailed and
extensive field research among the ritual healers in Tibet, India,
Indonesia, Kenya and Latin America.
Another program organized this time by the Institute for Ethnology has a
number of well-known Nepalese shamans like Maile Ngema Lama 50, was
beckoned by the ancestors of the shamans at the age of 8 and was
initiated into the art of healing. She grew up in a Tamang hamlet which
belonged to the Tibetan language group and began to practice shamanism
at the age of 11. Today she's 50 years old and is well-known in Nepal
for her healing profession.
Mohan Rai,
director of Shaman Studies and Research Centre in Kathmandu, is a
central personality of shaman culture in the Himalayas. He is 68, comes
from the border area of Nepal-Bhutan and belongs to the Mongol folk of
Rai and Kirati. His father was a famous Kirati Schaman. He speaks more
than ten languages.
Parvati Rai, Nepal, a female Kirati Schaman and practices since 45
years. Parvati worships Nature, like all Kirat-folk. Among the Kirats
the shaman plays a central role in the society from birth till death.
Parvati Rai received her initiation when she was nine years old and
became a shaman at the age of 16, lives in Kathmandu and works as a
shaman for the Kirat Society and supports the Kirat Foundation through
her work. She married at the age of 15 and has four kids.
June 17, 2007
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