The Spanish expression - la cultura cura (culture heals) - is an affirmation of the potential healing power of a variety of cultural practices that together constitute the ethos of a people. What happens, however, when cultures themselves are in jeopardy? What are the "antidotes" or healing modalities for an ailing culture? Healing Cultures addresses these questions from a variety of disciplines - anthropology, holistic folk traditions, literature, film, cultural and religious studies - bringing together the broad range of beliefs and the spectrum of practices that have sustained the peoples and cultures of the Caribbean.
This book showcases the diverse range of healing cultures, and explores how government action can have an impact through determining, promoting, protecting or destroying traditional cultural aspects of healing and wellbeing, based on a case study of Sri Lanka. It argues that diverse forms of healing practices matter not only because of their value in the health and wellbeing of the community, but also because they strongly contribute towards the intangible cultural heritage of the country. Identifying the diverse forms of healing practices existing in the country and the role of the existing regulatory mechanisms determines the potential for protecting the diversity of healing. Despite Sri Lanka being historically rich in traditional knowledge and expression, very little, if anything, has been written on regulating traditional practices related to health and wellbeing in the country, a lacuna which this volume fills.
The instant New York Times bestseller By the acclaimed author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, a groundbreaking investigation into the causes of illness, a bracing critique of how our society breeds disease, and a pathway to health and healing. In this revolutionary book, renowned physician Gabor Maté eloquently dissects how in Western countries that pride themselves on their healthcare systems, chronic illness and general ill health are on the rise. Nearly 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug; more than half take two. In Canada, every fifth person has high blood pressure. In Europe, hypertension is diagnosed in more than 30 percent of the population. And everywhere, adolescent mental illness is on the rise. So what is really “normal” when it comes to health? Over four decades of clinical experience, Maté has come to recognize the prevailing understanding of “normal” as false, neglecting the roles that trauma and stress, and the pressures of modern-day living, exert on our bodies and our minds at the expense of good health. For all our expertise and technological sophistication, Western medicine often fails to treat the whole person, ignoring how today’s culture stresses the body, burdens the immune system, and undermines emotional balance. Now Maté brings his perspective to the great untangling of common myths about what makes us sick, connects the dots between the maladies of individuals and the declining soundness of society—and offers a compassionate guide for health and healing. Cowritten with his son Daniel, The Myth Of Normal is Maté’s most ambitious and urgent book yet.
This volume brings together for the first time an updated collection of articles exploring poverty, poor relief, illness, and health care as they intersected in Western Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East, during a ‘long’ Middle Ages. It offers a thorough and wide-ranging investigation into the institution of the hospital and the development of medicine and charity, with focuses on the history of music therapy and the history of ideas and perceptions fundamental to psychoanalysis. The collection is both sequel and complement to Horden’s earlier volume of collected studies, Hospitals and Healing from Antiquity to the Later Middle Ages (2008). It will be welcomed by all those interested in the premodern history of healing and welfare for its breadth of scope and scholarly depth.
Healing Traditions offers a historical perspective to the interactions between South Africa's traditional healers and biomedical practitioners. It provides an understanding that is vital for the development of medical strategies to effectively deal with South Africa's healthcare challenges.
This book places the revival of Indigenous ceremonialism in a new light. The author aims at dispelling misconceptions and negative opinions by showing the traditional rituals to have well-defined and integrated therapeutic effects. The guardian spirit ceremonial of the Coast Salish First Nations combines the Spirit Quest of the Plateau bands with the rich ceremonial life of the Northwest Coast cultures. In this book, the author draws upon personal observations and upon information obtained in years of close contact with the Coast Salish Peoples, as a physician and psychiatrist, as well as upon ethnographic literature. He witnessed the revival of the ceremonial after decades of suppression and shows that, besides its complex traditional functions, it now provides the local Indigenous population with an annual winter treatment program in which several types of well-defined therapeutic procedures are integrated. These procedures compare favorably with Western medical management of psychophysiological conditions and with Western correctional measures in behavior disorders. Initiation into spirit dancing permits an alienated Indigenous person, suffering from what the author describes as 'anomic depression', to reidentify with the culture of his ancestors and obtain the traditional guardian spirit power in order to grow with it into a more rewarding and healthier existence. In presenting a scientific analysis of the ceremonial, the author aims at dispelling misconceptions and negative opinions. It is hoped that the Indigenous elders and healers who have generously shared their knowledge with the author will be encouraged by this book to continue with their efforts in the service of the Indigenous Peoples of the Northwest Coast.
People around the world are seeking for new healing methods, and they do so not in isolation but in global interaction. This publication provides new perspectives by combining essays from ritual specialists and scientists active in spiritual healing practices worldwide.
Music and Healing Across Cultures unfolds the mechanics of the relationship between music, healing, and the cosmos. It shows the organizing power of this tradition in its ability to even promote mind/body coordination in schizophrenics. This systematic, scientific approach to ethnomusicology and anthropology stands as a beacon light to those researchers who wish to make use of an ancient and wiser time when drums and restraints were preempted by creative energy and inner calm. Those incapable of feeling happiness are found dancing with joy. Those who could not speak are singing.
This work deals with the medical knowledge and beliefs of cultures outside of the United States and Europe. In addition to articles surveying Islamic, Chinese, Native American, Aboriginal Australian, Indian, Egyptian, and Tibetan medicine, the book includes essays on comparing Chinese and western medicine and religion and medicine. Each essay is well illustrated and contains an extensive bibliography.
