Alternative Healing

Shamanism, once predominant throughout almost every society in various cultural, is claimed to be the oldest therapeutic approach. In ancient Nepalese healing practices, the established shamans used to identify the sources of illnesses by feeling pulse, chanting divine mantras, identifying natural vibes or through other peculiar means. After identifying the source of infection, the shaman used to give available herbal medicines and ensure patience that he will be healed soon. It’s where placebo effect comes into play. Placebo is a lie that heals. It’s the psychosomatic phenomenon when recipient observes gradual improvement within body due to inner belief and expectations, rather than the treatment itself. In today’s time also, Neo-shamanism as modern practice of shamanic procedures in different medical context uniquely functions as alternative to biomedical healing. Following methods of earliest shamanism from around the globe, modern practitioners too are experimenting with cosmic allopathic to effect healing for self, others, and even the planet. In other word shamanism is the fetus phase of medical development that stands between healing and treatment of body. So rather than superstation it’s an art of healing human body via mind where the victim themselves gets involved in healing process.

What makes the placebo so influential? Medical science has no precise answer. Medicine has experts for all odds and ends of the human body except placebo because it lacks some empirical understanding for acclimating placebo effect in institutional domain. Since medical study regards all living creatures as a sophisticated machine; organs as spare parts, Infection as malfunction, which needs either correction or replacement. In medical world disease is a biochemical abnormality which need to be cured by chemical means and any other procedure beyond biochemistry realm are regarded non-scientific. So biochemistry always ignores placebo and attributes its effect to superstition, sprit and meta-physical misconception. Medicine has always been guided by mechanistic physiology of Rene Descartes where placebo has no value. Our bureaucratized medical practice with an active therapist and a passive patient reduces the patient to an object and demotes healing to mechanical act, just like a mechanic repairing broken vehicle. Contemporary healing has lost its grounding and has become devoid of the organic treatment procedures on base of which it was actually founded.

However, amid thrive of ‘body as machine’ metaphor; still many people in today’s world believe the presence of some special life force in living body. Such concept persists mainly in discourse of energy fields and placebo effect. The three base on which placebo effect functions are: culture, meaning and belief. In every culture, no matter primitive or modern, there exists someone labelled as the ‘healer’. And there remains an assumption that these healers are specialists who have power or are qualified to heal-.which means it’s not only the act of healer but the belief of victims towards healer’s credibility contributes in healing process. These days even science accept that how you feel isn’t just about what you eat, or do, or think. It’s about what you believe. It functions on a base that human body is designed to heal itself.

Shamanism as complex spiritual practice exists within broad metaphysical spectrum but also hold some justifiable cosmological sensibility. Let’s discuss one hypothetical scene on how it works; In a typical prehistoric setting, for instance in 3000 BC, an injured person is carried to the shaman’s place. The shaman washes up blood, identify wound and swears the patience that he will be cured with divine prayers and ritual performances. He then makes a strong mixture of herbs and as the whole tribe start to dance around the fire, he hums some prayers and carefully applies herbal mixture to the wound. Now let’s come to modern context, say in 2018 AD. A wounded person is carried to the hospital and doctor assures that he will be treated with the proper drugs and physiotherapy.

Across the span of century, these two pictures have something in common, the ritual of therapeutic act. Evidently, the shamans of past and surgeon of present shares same intuitive awareness that the environment of therapy is also a process of therapy itself. In both case the context helps patients to develop trust and inner belief that they will eventually be cured. Within this shamanic framework of treatment, today we are observing historical evolution in the biomedical science where abstractions like internal healing and power of belief, can now be explained in relation with scientific value of placebo effect.

Medical science has always been subjected to evolution because of everyday research and experimentation, and contemporary biomedicine has identified the benefit of incorporating shamanic tools in its domain. Some research papers have even started to describe the pre-operative formalities in hospital as a sort of modern shamanic ritual and in many western hospitals doctors are using of sugar pills in the name of placebo healing. The study carried out by researchers from the University of Oxford and the University of Southampton found that 97% doctors have prescribed placebo treatments and According to BBC report, most family doctors in UK have given placebo to their patience.

On one hand there remain an ethical side of placebo practice. Are doctors not morally responsible to remain honest with their patients? If doctors attempt to deceive their patients in any way including placebos, what about the integrity of patient-doctor relationship? On the other hand, the benefits of placebo are loaded with fact that they are economical, lack side effects and minimize dependency over chemical. Besides, the Hippocratic Oath, avowed by all doctors, includes this command “to apply all existing knowledge for the best possible treatment of individual patients”.

“Disease can only be best cured with drugs” This statement was popularly used against Shamanism practice in Nepal. But owing to the thriving practice of alternative healing, even in some advance western societies, Nepal should also consider adapting, not all but some useful, shamanic techniques in medical field. Since the Himalayan country not only possesses antique knowledge of cosmic healing and natural remedies but also vault rare herbal medicine. If Nepal consider this availability and institutionalize some ethos of shamanism in medical practice, the country could awake in new age of spiritual healing and dismantle the grand narrative of shamanism as ‘just a superstition’.