International Journal of Traditional Healing and Critical Mental Health

Cultural Contexts of Healing - An Anthropological Perspective on Indigenous Mental Health Practice, with case study on Sámi Healers in Porsanger, Norway

2025-10-30T05:06:53+00:00

This anthropological study examines the enduring potency and continuity of Sámi traditional healing (noaidut), through a case study of two healers, Nanna and Sigvald, in Porsanger, Norway. The research draws on interviews, participant observation, and historical analysis, contrasts colonialist and modern medical discourses, which tend to reduce indigenous practices to identity politics or primitive medicine with the living tradition. The paper posits that Sámi healing, characterized as an extended discourse on imagination, aligns with intellectual movements like C.G. Jung’s Analytical Psychology and William James’s Pragmatist Philosophy of Religion. The essence of the inherited practice, described by the healers as "bundling and releasing" or ecstasy, is shown to be dependent on participation and imagination. This core healing method is congruent with the Laestadian doctrine of the "Keys to Heaven," suggesting a continuity between Sámi spiritual heritage, Laestadianism, and Jungian imaginal practices. Despite historical erasure and stigmatization, the successful transfer of this knowledge from Nanna to Sigvald, facilitated partly by the researcher's positive assessment, confirms the tradition's ongoing resourcefulness and effectiveness in reestablishing connection and promoting mental health.

Delicious Moments (DLM): An Integrative Aesthetic Framework Bridging Japanese Culture, Healing, and Human Flourishing

2025-11-06T04:59:54+00:00

Across cultures and throughout history, human beings have cultivated ways of perceiving beauty even within impermanence, imperfection, and suffering, and through this perception found pathways toward healing and meaning. The Japanese word oishii (美味しい), literally written with the characters for beauty and flavour, points toward a sensibility in which deeply savouring life in all its complexity and vulnerability becomes a way of remembering beauty. That such wisdom can be articulated, shared, and brought into dialogue with contemporary healing practices is itself a Delicious Moment. This paper introduces Delicious Moments (DLM) as an integrative aesthetic orientation and meta-framework for healing and human flourishing, emerging from over a decade of collaborative clinical practice at the intersection of naturopathic medicine and cultural psychiatry. Rooted in Japanese aesthetic philosophy, including amae (relational belonging), daigomi (the essential flavour of experience), kintsugi (beauty through repair), and ba (relational field), DLM reframes healing not as the correction of what is broken, but as the remembering of what has always been whole. Six interconnected dimensions of aesthetic orientation are identified: Aesthetic Field, Aesthetic Holding, Aesthetic Sensing, Aesthetic Savouring, Aesthetic Integration, and Aesthetic Coherence. Building on these foundations, the paper explores DLM's cultural and philosophical roots, presents its experiential process model through the metaphor of the lotus and an eight-movement spiral, and situates the framework in dialogue with contemporary therapeutic approaches. A clinical illustration demonstrates how sustained aesthetic savouring may support the re-membering of fragmented experience into lived coherence. DLM proposes that beauty is not something we create, but something we remember, shaped through time, suffering, and love, waiting to be savoured. In this orientation, healing becomes flourishing, and flourishing becomes celebration.

Enhancing Client Agency: Bridging Yoga Therapy and Freire’s Pedagogy

2026-04-08T05:44:53+00:00

This paper proposes integration of Freire’s Pedagogy with psychotherapy to enhance client autonomy, enhance Quality of Life for individuals with mental illness and improve mental health literacy. There is an urgent need to develop accessible, culturally relevant, and accepted healthcare services, as over 150 million people in India require them. This study explores Yoga Therapy as a holistic, culturally accepted modality that enhances personal agency and fosters co-created understanding between the therapist and client in addressing distress and well-being. This theoretical paper draws on classical Yoga texts to highlight techniques that enhance client agency and examine common Yoga therapy practices that support a more balanced distribution of power between the therapist and client. The Patañjali Yoga Sūtra-s emphasise reflexivity and mutual engagement in therapeutic relationship while Yoga Rahasya of Nāthamuni mentions Goal setting based on students’ desires. In yoga therapy, clients construct meaning of symptoms and distress, with the therapist acting as a facilitator to build awareness, mirroring the concept of “conscientização”. The intervention is designed with the client, as suggested by Paolo Freire, creating a space of collaboration and a non-hierarchical relationship. The study is theoretical, drawing on existing literature in critical psychology and Indian Knowledge Systems. It sets the stage for culturally appropriate mental health care by attempting to create a space for common dialogue between mental health practitioners and indigenous healers. Qualitative studies and case studies can shed further light on how Freire’s pedagogy can be effectively combined with Yoga Therapy to create a new paradigm in culturally relevant critical psychology practices.

West meets East: A Travelogue on Traditional Healing and Rethinking Mental Health

2026-06-06T05:22:41+00:00

This travelogue explores the intersection of Western psychology and Indian traditional healing practices through a Fulbright scholar’s personal journey. Initially motivated by a growing disillusionment with the clinical, materialistic focus of psychological training in the United States, the author traveled to India to seek a more integrated approach to mental health that includes the body and spirit. Her entry point through yoga led to a profound immersion in Vedanta philosophy and Hindu spiritual expression, particularly during a transformative stay at an ashram in Coimbatore. The narrative highlights significant contrasts in conceptualizing mental health: while Western models rely on clinical diagnoses and brain-centric pathology, Indian systems offer subjective, holistic frameworks like the gunas and Panchakosha theory to describe energetic states and layered existence. The author also addresses complex issues of cultural appropriation, stigma, and the need to respect indigeneity while offering modern day solutions. Ultimately, the document argues for bridging these two worlds to create holistic epistemologies: leveraging the empirical strengths of Western evidence-based therapies alongside the ancient, subtle wisdom of Indian psychology to address individual and collective wellness. By integrating these diverse perspectives, the author envisions a more holistic methodology for mental health that honors the multifaceted nature of human suffering and the universal quest for truth and healing.

Representations of Volunteerism among Young Indian Adults: An Indian Philosophical Perspective

2026-03-05T05:01:33+00:00

Volunteerism has been extensively studied in the global context and is very relevant in today’s rapidly changing world with growing inequalities and pressing public health concerns. There is a growing need for community programmes involving collective action. Volunteerism is an integral part of community healing especially when a community involving large numbers of people have been psychologically and physically affected by traumatic events. Since volunteers are often a part of the affected community, the healing process involves both themselves and others. The present study used a quantitative content analysis framework to understand the representations young adults have of volunteerism. The participants were 22 volunteers from a specific urban local setting in India. A word association task was used to generate content associated with volunteerism. Content analysis of the word associations yielded 24 codes that were further abstracted to three categories or representations of volunteerism. The present research tries to contextualise the representations to the traditional Indian philosophy and community healing principles. The findings have implications for a holistic approach to collective well-being of communities, especially in the Indian context, where concepts like ‘seva’ and 'dharma’ and ‘Śramadāna’ encourage a form of reciprocal giving where one gains from others as much as in sacrificing their needs.

Editorial

2026-06-25T06:36:59+00:00