Health and Healing Global Discourse and Traditional Healing

International Patients

Each culture and society has formulated myths, belief systems, adaptive strategies, specialized cultural knowledge, and healing techniques. Within the twenty-first century, midst modernity, globalization and the age of information, these healing techniques are no longer confined to the regions of their origination and cultural enclaves.

Illness has..... both shaped and altered kinship roles societal expectations and rituals economic and ecological strategies and further defined each culture’s medicinal acceptations and practices (Atler: 2005: 3; Penn: 2000). Inspired many more to explore its causes and its effects And even more to heal!

Man is perpetually caught within the web Of Religion Magic and Science

Rise of Western medicine Brought scientific method Seeming dominance Artificial Division of Science and Religion Life and medicine Classification of Traditional/Indigenous Healing Methods as OTHER! Thailand Conference and connectedness.

Traditional Medicine Usage

Alma Ata and Issues 1971 James Reston Barefoot Doctors Who can be called a medical professional? What is medicine and how can we gauge healing? What are accepted standards and when should they be applied? Why aren't there more integrated temas of healers and M.D. s?

Indigenous Responses Hybrid Discourse Anxious to save their lands promote cultural understanding and continuity, Ecologically and economically sustainable living, tribal and ethnic recognition and self-determination (Neizen: 2003) Apprenticeships Healing Villages Collaboration

Healers, Shamans, medicine men Healers, shamans, medicine men and women-- those committed to the sacred art of healing, (Turner: 2005) who heal because they are called to do so through whatever methods and means available to them. As Rosita Arvigo (1994) highlighted, this is a sacred pact. It is not entered into lightly and the (Turner: 2005) path that leads one to engage in its practices is often as unique as the healers themselves.

Dr. Rosita and don Eligio Panti

Collaboration Projects in Africa with Traditional Healers Many ways of “mining or harvesting” Information Difficulties Learning to see the world through “Native eyes.”

Healing Villages Cultural revitalization Economic sustainability Healers as cultural brokers restoring connections among people and with the land and the Source* Sustainability Heal People and the earth Sacred relationships

Tales of experience travel on... And every moment in every place every society faces illness of a loved one and the quest for true healing continues