The flames are blown out and the resulting smoke is wafted around a person or place with a hand or eagle feather. After the ceremony, the ashes are disposed of on the bare soil. These ashes are thought to contain the negative thoughts and feelings.

Indigenous teachings are summarized by the Medicine Wheel , a circle that represents the cycles of life. Traditional healing can also be based on the season as the seasons can influence the practices being done.

In addition to these ceremonies, various Indigenous healers use plants, trees, herbs, soils, food, and water from the land around them. How can it help? Indigenous Traditional Healing has not been shown to cure cancer, but it can provide psychological, emotional, and spiritual support to cancer patients and their families which can help with stress, anxiety, and depression.

How do I find a group or practitioner? Some hospitals and cancer centres have Indigenous health care patient navigators that you can speak to if you are interested in using traditional healing as a complementary therapy. We also provide you with a few resources below to get you started:.

Photo by Brittany Colette on Unsplash. SUBSCRIBE to receive our latest blogs straight to your inbox! More Stories. Tell us your story. GET OUr STories by email. CBCN strives to voice the views and concerns of breast cancer patients through education, advocacy activities, and the promotion of information sharing.

Canadian Breast Cancer Network Somerset St. West Suite , Ottawa, ON Canada K2P 0J2 Tel: Toll-free: Email Us. Web Design McGill Buckley Powered by Quicksilk.

Disclaimer Privacy Policy Contact Us. The Voice of People With Breast Cancer. Home About CBCN Our Vision Our Team Our Media Our Performance Our Supporters Our Partners Physicians Treatment Algorithm MBC White Paper HER CHOICE Digital Counselling Tool Contact Subscribe.

Breast Cancer Basics. What is Breast Cancer? Surgery Radiation Therapy Systemic Therapy Clinical Trials Roles of Your Treatment Team Side Effect Management Complementary Therapies. Breast Prosthetics Breast Reconstruction Living Flat or Asymmetrical. There are 36 meridians connecting sites on the body.

The 12 principal meridians are symmetrical and correspond to visceral organs. Not only is disease caused by physical factors, but also by exogenous atmospheric factors wind, cold, heat, dampness, dryness, fire , endogenous emotional factors, trauma, bad diet, exhaustion and excessive sex 3.

The meridians are used in diagnosis and treatment. Disease may also originate from the spirit realm and affect the mind and the body.

In Traditional Navajo Medicine, contact with animals, ceremonies, ghosts of the deceased, or living or dead enemies may lead to illness 4. African traditions often see sickness as caused by ancestral spirits, witchcraft, or sorcerers.

Accordingly, healers often counteract spells or appease the ancestors 5. Some disease may be caused by mental imbalance. In addition, jealousy can cause illness 6. In traditional African medicine, mental illness may be seen as a calling to be a healer.

The visions seen in schizophrenia are interpreted as communication with the ancestors and the divine. In this way psychiatric illness is embraced by society and used as a tool to heal others 7. The diagnosis of disease uses familiar techniques of asking questions, inspection, and auscultation as a primary source of information.

However, physical symptoms and signs are not the only concerns and manifestations in diagnosis. In the Ayurvedic tradition, the examination evaluates nine attributes: psychosomatic constitution, disease susceptibility, quality of tissues, body build, anthropometry, mental health, digestive power, exercise endurance, and age.

Then the evaluation of the disease is performed by means of an interview, a physical examination, and evaluation of pulse, urine, stool, tongue, voice and speech, skin, eyes, and overall appearance 8.

Similarly, the importance of diagnosis can be seen in Native American traditions. The spirit world plays a large role in causing disease and therefore Native American healers, also known as shamans, often call upon the spirits to aid in diagnosis.

There is usually only one diagnosis, although there may be multiple causes for the illness including physical, psychological, animals, other natural phenomena, ceremonies, ghosts of deceased humans, and contact with foreigners, especially enemies, living or dead.

There are various ways of diagnosing illness including coal gazing and interpreting burnt embers from a fireplace. Diagnosis may involve the use of hallucinogens such as peyote.

Once diagnosed, a ceremony may be held where the patient repeats prayers said by the healer 4. Traditional healing incorporates nature into diagnostic systems. The individual is seen as a part of a greater whole, and thus the relationship of the individual to the environment is a key component of the traditional healing system.

Nature and the human body are viewed as constantly influencing each other. In Ayurveda, all objects and the human body are combinations of the five elements or the Panchamahabhutas: Akash ether , Vayu air , Agni fire , Jala water , and Prithvi earth. There are three bioenergies derived from the elements, these are Vata, Pitta, and Kapha.

These energies are challenged during the seasons and also if there is any emotional or physical imbalance 8. Complementary forces in nature are seen as essential components of Traditional Chinese Medicine. These forces are known as Yin and Yang, a concept which is derived from opposing sides of a hill or mountain.

Humans are viewed as a representation of the universe and so a balance between these forces is maintained. Traditional Chinese Medicine also incorporates the five-element theory with elements seen as analogous to organs: lung:metal; liver:wood; kidney:water; heart:fire; and spleen:earth 3.

The elements interact with each other and have directions, seasons, climates, tastes, and stages of development.

If they are out of alignment or cannot interact properly then disease can result. Techniques such as acupuncture, acupressure, moxibustion, cupping, and massage are utilized to bring balance back to these opposing energies.

Traditional healing believes in maintaining a sound body, mind, and spirit in order to prevent disease. Socio-demographic characteristics of the traditional healers and patients were presented in simple frequencies.

All the authors significantly contributed in distributing contents, orderly classification of data and in writing the final report.

The objectives and methods used in the study were explained to all participants prior to starting data collection. Written informed consent was obtained from the participants before interview to participate in the study, and they were assured that all their personal information would be preserved with confidentiality.

In addition, the participants were informed that their participation was voluntary and could be terminated at any time without reason and without any penalty. People appeared to be spontaneous and felt free in giving their information to the interviewer because they were informed about publication of their way of healing practices, which they considered to be valuable.

The research evaluation committee of the Department of Anthropology, University of Chittagong, Bangladesh, approved the study. Mean age of traditional healers was 46 SD ±5.

Table 3. Table 4 shows the types of traditional practices for healing and black magic to harm others. The study identified mainly two types of traditional healing systems in the rural setting: i religious healing system and ii non-religious healing system.

Religious healing systems included the use of verses from religious books, wishing good health for the patients; verses were usually written on a paper and given as Tabij amulets. Sometimes the religious verses were recited and blown on the face or on water and food items, either to drink, to eat, or to sacrifice as offerings in the name of God, gods, etc.

Religious healing practices in the study villages were termed as Kalami, Bhandari and Spiritual. Kalami and Bhandari healing conventionally used religious verses or other religious incantations in healing, and healers of these systems worked as religious guide in the society, whereas spiritual healing was mostly performed reportedly by establishing a communication with diverse sacred spirits and dead pious ancestors through meditation.

Kalami is the healing practice provided by religious leader in Muslim community based on the verses of Quran locally called Kalam.

This healing system clearly differentiates medical based diseases physical diseases and spiritual difficulties. Kalami healers Hujurs reported that they offer to cure problems that have no physical symptoms, like embodiment of devil entities, abolishing black magic, complexity in going abroad, infertility, and resolving family dispute.

However, they sometimes also treat patients returned from medical centers. Kalami healing method prioritized diagnosis of the diseases, for which some verses of the Quran were written on a paper and a bodna a small kind of pitcher made of copper or aluminum was kept on it.

If the disorder was spiritual, the bodna would move automatically; otherwise, it would be perceived as a physical disease, and the sufferer would be advised to go to the medical doctor directly. Thus, the evil power was reportedly exorcised from the affected person.

However, some such healers do not usually fix fees; they take whatever people offer them with satisfaction after cure. Kalami healing practices could be assimilated usually by self-practice and sheer beliefs on the Holy Quran.

The Bhanderi healers claimed to have a miraculous power in flying invisibly and could go to the Heaven, if they just wanted this. They usually have a peculiar outer appearance, wreathed in many necklaces sometimes made of odd materials , each of which was said to be spiritually significant to them.

They first diagnosed the disorder in meditation with the assistance of ancestral Baba in their healing room, where a chair was reserved for Baba, with other peculiar instruments.

In Bhandari healing system, a paper with reportedly Persian scriptures was used commonly; this was too obscure for lay people to understand. The paper was put inside water contained in a pot. It was firmly believed that, if anyone could drink that water faithfully, with the name of Gousul Azam Bab a Maiz Bahandari, all the spiritual disorders would be cured, along with the physical sickness, whether it was cancer, AIDS, or any other complex ailment.

This paper with Persian scriptures was also provided as Tabij amulets to use for different diseases. This invaluable spiritual paper was said to be brought from the Rouza Sharif Mausoleum of Khawza Najim Uddin Chisti a famous and well-respected Islamic religious leader in the Indian Sub-continent.

The Bhandari healers demanded nothing for service; they took whatever people gave with satisfaction. Knowledge on Bhandari healing was reportedly a c hieved by the long mentoring and blessings of another senior Bhandari healer or Baba. Once upon a time, Baba benevolently called me nearer to him and suggested that I open my mouth, and he just infused me with blessings.

Afterwards, I was spiritualized day by day, and got the healing power. Bhandari healers were found to be full-time practitioners and demonstrated their lifestyles in different ways. They practiced meditation; some of them sang Maiz Bhandari songs that sometimes contradicted with the prevailing religious beliefs of the surrounding local people.

Respondents reported that people, who were usually followers of Bhandari rituals and belief systems and also had faith enough on the Bhandari healing methods, were found to seek Bhandari healing services to address their problems.

In spiritual healing practice, people were said to be cured by the communication of human media with diverse sacred spirits and pious ancestors; often they were offered torturous treatments, along with incantations to drive away the imaginary evil spirits or effects of sorcery or avaricious and malicious characters.

Spiritual healers were locally called Boiddya. The spiritual healers reported that they offered services for all spiritual problems, such as embodiment of evil entities, black magic or effect of sorcery, complexity in going abroad, infertility, resolving family disputes or village conflicts.

They even often treated the chronic and complex diseases of patients, who returned from modern medical centers with treatment failure. All the women spiritual healers of the two villages were interviewed, and they belonged to the Hindu religion.

These healers offered their healing services Saturday and Tuesday only. Although the diagnosis and consultation fee was small, the spiritual healing required a list of treatment instruments, which made the treatment implicitly expensive, sometimes even more expensive than the modern diagnosis and treatment procedures.

Majority of the patients in spiritual healing were also women. A Hindu woman healer in Bhabanipur village recalled:. At that time, I just acted as mad for one or two months, my ancestral spirits chose and compensated me, and ultimately from then on I possessed the spiritual power of healing.

By participatory observations, it was recorded that a large number of peculiar things were prescribed to make one cure. For example, water from seven ponds, seven eggs, 1. Even though the spiritual healing system was a bit expensive to pursue in the rural context, a good number of people were found to come to the spiritual healers on healing days Saturdays and Tuesdays.

Candidates for spiritual healing considered this practice to be fruitful based on unquestionable faith. If we are ailing, we first go to the spiritual healers. It was 6 or 7 years back, once my father was disordered suddenly, then repeatedly vomited and gradually got moribund.

Then, we just took my father to a Hindu woman spiritual healer in the Bania Para of Bhabanipur. Afterwards, she gave him pani-pora, dab-pora, and Tabij to use. After that, within one week, my father got complete recovery.

From then, we firmly believe in spiritual healing. The study observed that people in the community sought cures for any health and spiritual difficulties, without considering the religious perspective of the healers; often the Hindus went to the Hujurs, and the Muslims approached the Hindu healers to seek traditional healing.

They are very cordial to address any of our problems, whenever we feel them, and they come to our home even at night in emergency, and we also attend at many of their social functions. So-called supernatural power in some non-religious practices was used in ill-motivated and sacrilegious purposes to make explicit harm to the intended persons, domestic animals, and crops as well.

Three distinctive types of non-religious practices usually available in the rural areas were: Sorcery, Kabiraji, and Home Medicine. Sorcery deliberately used the so-called supernatural power to harm others upon request with higher fees, offering black magic or anti-sorcery for healing.

Kabiraji practice was based on local medicinal plants or substances of animal origin. Kabiraji practice had both formal and informal aspects: the registered traditional practitioners of Unani and Ayurvedic medicine were also locally termed Kabiraj.

However, the informal use of wild plants for therapeutic purposes by the Kabiraj commonly prevailed in rural areas.

Home Medicine practice involved self-medication using indigenous knowledge and items available in the home environment. It is noteworthy that both religious and non-religious healing practice in some cases seemed to be based on a system of belief in the supernatural; the boundary between these two healing practices is in use of religion.

Usually, religious healing methods use supernatural power positively for the well-being of the people, while non-religious healing systems do not use religion for healing except sorcery. However, sorcery uses so-called supernatural power for evil-intended and irreligious purpose to make explicit harm to others.

It uses reversed verses of sacred religious books, which is considered completely anti-religious work great sin , and thus forbidden in all religions in both villages. A sorcerer is someone who uses supernatural power to harm others upon secret request by someone; a sorcerer offers either black magic or anti-sorcery procedure for healing.

Assimilating sorcery was said to have been difficult; sorcerers in the Muslim community in the village thought that the person who intended to learn this method had to maintain 17 conditions, which were the fundamental regulations of Islam, to achieve the power of this traditional healing system.

Practice of sorcery is often locally termed as Baan-mara. Diagnosis of the disorder was prioritized in this healing method, in which sorcerer uttered an incantation on a string, and if it was enlarged automatically, the disease was considered as spiritual, likely treatable by the sorcery.

The demand for sorcerers was very high in cases of conflict over the issues of land, domestic animals, village politics, or disputes among the villagers. If a person was attacked by Ban-mara sorcery , anti-sorcery was said to be the only way of curing.

Few years back, I was the victim of black magic because of a conflict over land property with neighbors. When I was about to die, my family took me to a Boiddya spiritual healer in Rangamati. Immediately, I was cured. They can perform the contagious magic, with no direct contact needed with the victim.

They required something that had been in contact with that person, such as hair, nail-parings, urine, or a bit of clothing; then mystic words or songs are recited over it. More importantly, sorcery was said to be carried out against animals or crops in the rural areas.

Healing based on medicinal plants, creepers, and herbs as well as locally-available substances is called Kabiraji healing, and both formal and informal practitioners are locally called Kabiraj. Kabiraj were considered to be successful in curing some physical diseases, using indigenous knowledge based on locally-available wild medicinal plants.

There were rich floras of medicinal plants in the village. Out of the estimated species of different plants growing in the village-side, more than a thousand were regarded as having medicinal properties. The study observed that these plants were used for therapeutic purposes in both informal and traditional practices at Bhabanipur and Jobra villages.

Participants reported that continuous use over long periods of time of the local plants in Kabiraji healing practice had made these an integral part of the culture of the people in the rural community. As a result, even at this age of highly-advanced allopathic medicine, a large number of the rural population still prefer using Kabiraji healing method to treat most of their diseases.

I believe without reservation that all the treatments are within the plant creepers and herbs, which we often do not understand.

Some medicinal plant components that are used in the Kabiraji practice for curing various diseases were reported to be the sap of Tulshi leaves for coughing, the sap of Neem leaves for malaria, the juice of raw watermelon for typhoid, and the sap of mango seed with ginger for diarrhea.

The Kabiraj in village sometimes had knowledge of modern herbal and allopathic medicines, too. The Kabiraji was a system of traditional healing, accepted formally by the appropriate authority of the Bangladesh Government with institutionalized form as Unani and Ayurvedic medicines that latter use modern laboratory facilities in the treatment and are usually found in the peri-urban and urban areas.

The study reports that some of the villagers from every religion in the rural community were found to be conservative and preferred not to go to the traditional healers or doctors for minor illnesses. Sometimes they practiced self-medication and tried to be cured by using known medicinal plants, creepers, or something else, which were available in home environment; they termed these as home medicine.

This system of healing was based on indigenous knowledge that was passed from one generation to another. Practitioners of home medicine could diagnose the problems using their insights and experiences and could solve minor health problems using self-treatment, which was a cost-effective practice at the family level.

This study reports that people from all religions first went to the traditional healers; if not cured, they moved to medical centers for treatment using scientific methods of curing. Nevertheless, some ailments due to invisible entities were considered impossible to be cured by medical technology, and all such cases eventually had to go to the traditional healers.

Individuals who were affluent, educated and aware rarely went to the traditional healers first. People with such backgrounds even felt ashamed and were insulted when asked to provide any sort of information about their going to the traditional healers, despite living as a close neighbor of the healers.

On the contrary, those who were illiterate, unemployed, less aware and, more importantly, poor, usually went to the traditional healers because they could not afford modern medical treatment.

However, it was observed that people of all classes and backgrounds sought assistance of traditional healers to resolve health problems that could not be treated successfully by the modern medical system.

Most of the traditional healers at the village level claimed of having miraculous power in healing; they tried to persuade people to use their services. All the healers seemed to differentiate between medically-curable diseases and those to be cured by traditional healing systems.

Generally, they did not deal with ailments that had clear-cut physical symptoms and were deemed easily curable by going to the medical doctors.

The study observed that healers, especially those practicing religious methods, could ensure curing those disorders that were said to be beyond natural phenomena, and were invisible, mental, spiritual, and had treatment failure at the medical centers. Kabiraji and Bhandari practitioners in rural areas claimed to make serious attempts to cure all diseases that might include cancer, diabetes, AIDS, or any other chronic health difficulties.

All patients from traditional healers in rural communities were asked about the functions of religions in healing. The most common responses revealed that they perceived religious belief to be an important aspect of healing, and most of the traditional healing practices were performed with the assistance of supernatural beliefs.

In the extreme case of illness, we worship the gods, sacrifice various animals to the gods. Sometimes Allah Himself makes one ill to test the [faith of] persons or to forgive their sogira gonnah Minor sins as believed in Islam , and it is Allah who kindly helps all human beings to be cured.

This supernatural entity that we conceptualize as Bhogoban is capable of making human beings experience harm, disease, and other problems.

The study observed that when illness was considered to arise from the anger of supernatural power especially in Hindus, prevention took the form of endeavoring to remain on good terms with the gods and spirits. The belief in a relationship of minor sins with illness was also widely held among people in the Muslim communities.

The study revealed that the Muslims strongly believed that adherence to the Islamic rituals and abstaining from sins, even if these are minor Sogira in nature, can be a strategy for to prevent diseases. Moreover, carrying either religious paper or object or keeping these in a home would protect the owners or the household members from the illness and misfortune caused by any evil spirits.

This type of preventive measure was believed to work as insurance against any devil entities among the villagers. Such a protection strategy was also used for attracting good supernatural powers, which included Allah or His representative Prophets and the religious saints.

Some people used Tabij amulets to attract good supernatural guardians. Despite some differences, similarities were observed in the attitudes of traditional healers. These similarities were:. Most of the healers differentiated between physical diseases and spiritual diseases.

However, they initially tried to cure all diseases and did not suggest going to medical centers until they completely failed.

In the course of healing, some healers were used to causing harm to others for money, but they rarely admitted it, particularly whenever they were questioned by an outsider.

All healers tried to make their activities rational and soothing, which they thought was necessary for human life. When one approached them, they displayed their charisma. They thought their traditional healing should be more valued and that they should have an association, as the government often pressured them for using unauthorized practices.

However, when observed intensively, they rarely wanted their children to follow their profession as healers. They were not satisfied personally with such a profession. Traditional medicine is often the first line of treatment-seeking, particularly among low income segments of the population in rural Bangladesh.

The present study mainly focused the various types of traditional healing practices, especially Kalami healing, Bhandari healing and Home medicine, which are dominant in rural areas of Bangladesh.

These have rarely been found in earlier studies. Further, it appears that this is the first study of its kind to explore the diagnostic and prevention methods and functions of religion in traditional healing and to show who and when goes to traditional healers in the rural context.

Previous studies conducted in Bangladesh have usually addressed only a single aspect of traditional healing or a case study. In contrast, this study investigated the basic features of all possible traditional healing practiced in rural Bangladesh.

Almost all people in rural areas included in this study followed the traditional system for healing and continued to use traditional medicine at any stage of illness due to their faith in traditional medicine and the scarcity and expense of modern medical treatment.

The popularity of these healing practices shows no decline; we believe it has continued almost unchanged for generations. Other studies in developing countries, particularly in Bangladesh [ 20 ] have also documented that trained doctors are not readily available in the rural areas; most of the childbirths are being conducted by traditional healers.

They are not as skilled as trained medical practitioners are, but, in areas where there are no trained doctors, traditional healers are the only ones providing services.

Among the traditional medicine user countries, the majority followed the Chinese, Indian and European traditions [ 21 ]. These figures are not surprising, as traditional medicine continues to gain popularity both in the developing and developed countries for its proven safe and effective techniques in healing, which can contribute significantly to public health [ 8 ].

In some cases, people treated traditional healers as disreputable because they were considered uneducated and following archaic methods; sometimes they were condemned for exercising using deception in their healing strategies. Among traditional healing practices, Kabiraji was the most widely-practiced in rural areas based on the available medicinal plants and substances of animal origin.

Kabiraji practice also included Unani and Ayurvedic medicine, varying from other non-botanic and religion-based traditional healing, and complementing the laboratory-based modern pharmaceuticals. Similarly, a study based on the rural Kabiraji system [ 26 ] showed that a number of plant components used by the Kabiraj are considered Ayurvedic medicinal plants and their usage by the Kabiraj matches the known Ayurvedic uses.

This observation suggests that some interactions have taken place over the centuries between Ayurvedic physicians and folk medicine practitioners, which is not surprising, considering the fact that the two systems have existed side-by-side for millennia. This study explored the Bhandari and Kalami healing practices as distinct systems in rural Bangladesh.

Both Bhandari and Kalami healers worked as religious guides in the society; both usually used verses of religious books for healing disorders that were physically non-symptomatic and could not be handles by medical sciences.