[NYTimes] A Doctor for Disease, a Shaman for the Soul

Hello,

An old article, from New York Times, about doctor and shaman, in hospital

A Doctor for Disease, a Shaman for the Soul

— The patient in Room 328 had diabetes and hypertension. But when Va Meng Lee, a Hmong shaman, began the healing process by looping a coiled thread around the patient’s wrist, Mr. Lee’s chief concern was summoning the ailing man’s runaway soul.

“Doctors are good at disease,” Mr. Lee said as he encircled the patient, Chang Teng Thao, a widower from Laos, in an invisible “protective shield” traced in the air with his finger. “The soul is the shaman’s responsibility.”

At Mercy Medical Center in Merced, where roughly four patients a day are Hmong from northern Laos, healing includes more than IV drips, syringes and blood glucose monitors. Because many Hmong rely on their spiritual beliefs to get them through illnesses, the hospital’s new Hmong shaman policy, the country’s first, formally recognizes the cultural role of traditional healers like Mr. Lee, inviting them to perform nine approved ceremonies in the hospital, including “soul calling” and chanting in a soft voice.

The full article : NYtimes

Good day

Je crois que c'est Corinne Sombrun qui expliquait dans une de ses vidéos qu'en Sibérie des chamanes sont présents au bloc opératoire et que grâce à eux la durée d'hospitalisation est plus courte et les cicatrices moins visibles.

In English please
This is an English section here.

Finally, I got the time to read this. I have to say that I have mixed feelings about it. Maybe because I was expecting too much of it. I really though it was going to relate in precise details the working process of a shaman, the diagnosis part as well as the healing process part. Instead the article is much more about cultural tolerance and awareness raising among US hospitals. That's a good thing, but it seems that doctors still refuse to consider it seriously, as if the shaman presence is like a security blanket to the patient. They don't go further into questioning the actual effectiveness of an energetic treatment combined with a medical treatment.

Sure, a patient whose mind is at a peaceful state might be much more responding to a medical treatment. But still the Shaman's work is not only about peace of mind. No, it truly wonders and focuses on healing energetic disorders affecting the patient's aura. That's the big question mark left at the end of the article.
Maybe the journalist is as doubtful and skeptical as Western medecine is towards "other medecines". They see them as cutural, traditional, mysterious and out of any kind of scientific consideration nor debate.