Recall the last time you or someone you know was experiencing a healing crisis. You know, some illness that sent them to bed for a week or perhaps to the hospital for days at a time. Our frequent images include medicine bottles, sterile walls, doctors in white jackets, and the beeping of medical equipment. Traditional medical care in the United States is often focused on ending the symptoms of disease within the body. While it has its merits, patients can sometimes fight for ineffective or short-lived cures and can feel as if the issue hasn’t been resolved. So, what is the missing link? Perhaps it can be found in the cultures of indigenous cultures from around the world.
Indigenous cultures believe in the wholeness of body, mind, and spirit. The believe manifestation of dis-ease in the body is a symptom of spiritual distress or the need for awakening. As such, if you travel to the African bush, the mountains of India, or deep into the forests of the Amazon, you will find the medicine men and women who are focused on healing of the spirit in addition to the body. There, the healing process looks different. It is ceremony, truly. It is filled with plants and herbs from the Earth, prayer, singing, chanting, drumming and contemplation. Sterile walls are replaced with sacred spaces consecrated to and by Mother Earth. Shamans usher the process of healing on emotional, spiritual, and physical levels. Patients have the ability to shift their spirits in ways that will promote complete healing.
In the documentary, The Sacred Science, patients experiencing diabetes, cancer, digestive issues, and even Parkinson’s disease, spend time with Shamans to experience true traditional healing. A combination of the jungle environment, being close to nature, use of plant medicine, spiritual guidance, and examination of one’s life’s patterns propelled each patient to a sacred journey toward peace. They each experienced ceremony – sacred ceremony led by the Divine. Alternative holistic centers and natural food stores, many of which rely on traditional indigenous principles are available because of the importance of preserving these practices and beliefs.
In indigenous cultures, Spirit, permeates every part of life, including disease. Do we see it as something evil that needs to be rid quickly? Or do we view disease as an opportunity to check in with our higher selves? Is healing making the horrible evil go away without regard to the patterns that attracted the disease? Or is it time to commune with Spirit and to nourish self?
I say – Let the ceremony begin.
