Medical Ethnology: Healing & Shamanism (Satis Shroff)

Medical-ethnology: Healing and Shamanism (Satis Shroff)

A shaman is a person who goes beyond the normal, ordinary sensory reception and perception of mortals into deeper dimensions. You can also enter this perceptive phase if you take the time and develop the inclination to delve deeper into the matter of the microcosm. It’s not fantasy. It’s reality, where you venture into. The shaman does this through his ecstatic dance, ancient rituals, songs and recitation. He can make you a take part in this wonderful world unseen world of spirits and the soul of Nature which he helps you to overcome and communicate with. This has a healing effect upon you.

There have been western scientists who have researched and drummed with ethnic shamans of the Himalayas, Siberia and Canada and have written scientific papers and paperbacks about their trance experiences interspersed with the shaman’s lyrical songs. The works of Larry Peters (Ecstasy and Healing in Nepal), Michael Opitz (Schamanen im Blinden Land), Robert Desjarlais (Body and Emotion), Hitchcock & Jones (Spirit Possession in the Nepal Himalayas) have shed light on healing and the healers of the Himalayas. Most ethno-scientists are engaged in documenting the phenomena for their university dissertations to acquire higher academic qualifications. If you ask them later in life they might reply: ‘Oh, I’m working for a pharmacological lab’ or ‘I’m with Novartis or Glaxo or other pharma giants with no time and muse for shamanic travels and communication with Nature.

The materialistic accumulation of consumer luxuries in the rat-race with the Jonses, Smiths and Müllers takes away the little time that they possess. A walk to the zoo with captive traumatic animals, a circus with animals who’ve lost their natural habitats, a short drive to a tourist-infested artificial beauty spot and entertainment park, and the day’s over. The kids have junk-food in their bellies and sweet sticky drinks which provide unnecessary calories for prospective couch potatoes. The consumption of sleeping tablets, viagra for more nocturnal action, ecstasy and other fashionable drugs, excellent wines, beer, grappa in society makes the progeny hyperactive computer-kids who again need to be suppressed in their eternal hyperactivity through the use of retalin and other drugs.

Biomedical therapies are widely used. Drugs such as antidepressants, mood stabilizers and anti-psychotics. There are also humanistic therapies which look at the imbalance between your ‘true self’ when you are ill and the self which you present to the others in the society. Many tend to present a virtual, ideal self while networking or socialising, a self that has the best qualities: sans quarrels, sans separation, sans rosenkrieg, sans envy, sans jealousy, sans egoism. This self is the ideal you, how you’d like to be physically and mentally but how you actually aren’t. Strivings, cravings, desires that you hope to fulfil outside your present context.

The practice of shamanism dates back to 18,000 years as can be seen in the French cave drawings but the word ‘shaman’ has its origin in Siberia. It is an ancient religion and is so widespread and ancient and it throws light on the essentials of the human soul. Shamans are truly masters in setting their own spirits in trance to enter the other dimension of the spirits, beckon them with their falsetto voices, ask them questions and even receive answers from them about illnesses and other phenomena in the real world. This trance is encouraged by rhythmic drums, songs and mental discipline during which concentration is required. When the shaman is in a trance he can speak with spirits, and sometimes he’s possessed by these invisible powers. He can also undertake long spiritual journeys to the bottom of the ocean or to the Roof of the World or even the moon during the trance phase of his shamanic ritual.

Despite these extraordinary powers and abilities, the shamans have their own codex and are not priests. They are mostly engaged in other professions and practiced shamanism to heal ill members of the society they live in such as hamlets and small towns. Sometimes, they worked as healers to gain prestige in their respective societies for not all shamans received the same respect, as is also the case with modern physicians who are also evaluated by word of mouth by the patients and even in the internet. If students, teachers, doctors, lawyers, universities have rankings, ranking in the world of shamanism might be the done thing. It’s amazing how many shamanic placements are made by professional groups when one writes an article on a certain theme in the internet. That’s product placement and management.

Whereas some shamans hear a calling in their dreams in which a dead shaman appears and asks him or her to become a practitioner of traditional medicine, as shamans are called today, others do a period of apprenticeship by drumming under an established and experienced guru. Guru just means a teacher or leaned person. The most important day for a shaman is the Gurupuja, the day of worship of the guru. Most shamans in Nepal who have accepted Hinduism worship Shiva of the Himalayas as their guru or Mahakala (He whose time is Great or the Great Black One), an Indo-Tibetan divinity. It’s a spiritual relationship between the teacher and the pupil during which the shamans and their apprentices of an entire region get together in their costumes and perform rituals and beat their drums.

The shamans believe in spirits that help humans and the magical powers that the spirits endow to the shamans, and the shamans play an important role in the struggle for existence in the Himalayan world. The shamans give humans in the Himalayas the reassurance that they can heal illnesses, bring bad weather, success in hunts and have power over threats and unexpected calamities in the cold, craggy heights in the form of landslides, monsoon floods or even drought. The belief of the people regarding the power of the shamans grew because the seasonal changes were originally caused by Nature influenced, as we know today, by industrialisation in different parts of the globe. The shamans thus became a mediators not only between the unseen spirits and humans but also between humans and helped them to establish contact with their inner selves and the natural world around them through rituals.

Fear is common to all folks and the ethnic communities in this planet and one of the most important function of a shaman or psychologist or psychiatrist has to do with teaching the ill person how to cope with angst. In psychiatry we have cognitive therapies that are based on the view that mental illness is due to the irrational ideas patients have about themselves and the world they live in. The therapy mantra is: just replace your negative thoughts with positive ones. You might have maladaptive behavioural patterns, so just replace them with adaptive ones.

Whereas modern psychology and psychiatry try to get rid of angst or phobia through the use of pharmaceuticals, hypnosis and even confrontation with the fear-causing objects or living beings, the shaman’s chosen therapy is the trance session during which the spirits of the dead that have become evil with age could be eliminated by the shaman during such a session. In many countries the shaman also wears a mask to encounter the evil, illness-causing spirits, and the shaman is endowed with the power to suck the cause of the illness out of the patient’s body. In addition, the shaman also works with dreams (Traumdeutung) and speaks indirectly or directly with spirits which remain invisible to other people. Shamans are even asked to find lost objects or to find the truth in a conflict between two humans. The therapeutic relationship between a psychologist, psychiatrist or a shaman is the contact between the therapist and the ill-person, and is a demanding relationship. A lot depends on the therapist’s ability to be non-judgemental and empathetic. Establishing a good relationship encourages disturbed or ill people to reveal feelings, thoughts, their inner lives which they may conceal from their family members or physicians, and which can influence the healing process is crucial.

In this connection it must be mentioned that religion and spirituality play a pivotal role in coping with illness for many people with a terminal illness, for instance cancer. The spiritual needs of many cancer and other terminal patients living in mega-cities are not supported by religious communities and the medical system. Spiritual support is closely associated with better quality of life (QOL). There is evidence for the fact that religious individuals more frequently desire aggressive measures to extend life in comparison to individuals who don’t have any sense of spirituality and religiousness. Individuals who pray and believe in God or a Higher Being are most unlikely to end their lives.

So keep on praying. You’re on the right track and don’t lose hope. This life is so wonderful. Make a bucket-list before you kick it.


Autor Biographie

Satis Shroff ist Dozent, Schriftsteller, Dichter und Kunstler und außerdem Lehrbeauftragter für Creative Writing an der Albert Ludwigs Universität Freiburg. Er hat sechs Bücher geschrieben: Im Schatten des Himalaya (Gedichte und Prosa), Through Nepalese Eyes (Reisebericht), Katmandu, Katmandu (Gedichte und Prosa mit Nepali autoren) Glacial Whispers (Gedichtesammlung zwischen 1997-2010). Er hat zwei Sprachführer im Auftrag von Horlemannverlag und Deutsche Stiftung für Entwicklungsdienst (DSE) geschrieben, außerdem drei Artikeln über die Gurkhas, Achtausender und Nepals Symbolen für Nelles Verlags ‚Nepal’ und über Hinduismus in „Nepal: Myths & Realities (Book Faith India). Sein Gedicht „Mental Molotovs“ wurde im epd-Entwicklungsdienst (Frankfurt) veröffentlicht. Seine Lyrik sind in Slow Trains, International Zeitschrift, World Poetry Society (WPS), New Writing North, Muses Review, The Megaphone, Pen Himalaya, Interpoetry publiziert worden. Er ist ein Mitglied von Writers of Peace, poets, essayists, novelists (PEN), World Poetry Society (WPS) usw.

Satis Shroff lebt in Freiburg (poems, fiction, non-fiction) und schreibt über ökologische, medizin-ethnologische und kultur-ethnische Themen. Er hat Zoologie und Botanik in Nepal, Sozialarbeit und Medizin in Freiburg und Creative Writing in Freiburg und UK studiert. Da Literatur eine der wichtigsten Wege ist, um die Kulturen kennenzulernen, hat er sein Leben dem Kreatives Schreiben gewidmet. Er arbeitet als Dozent in Basel (Schweiz) und in Deutschland an der Akademie für medizinische Berufe (Uniklinik Freiburg). Ihm wurde der DAAD-Preis verliehen. * *

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