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

This paper presents Delicious Moments (DLM) as an integrative aesthetic framework bridging Japanese culture, clinical practice, and the art of human flourishing. Developed through more than a decade of naturopathic, psychotherapeutic, and cultural work—including collaborations in integrative psychiatry in Toronto—DLM reframes healing not as a method but as a way of being: an attuned participation in the rhythm of life. Drawing on biopsychosocial–spiritual and Japanese aesthetic traditions, DLM introduces the aesthetic field as the unifying dimension of coherence across body, psyche, society, and spirit.

Through clinical vignettes, community rituals such as Delicious Moments Dining, and the seven-stage Delicious Life Design (DLD) spiral, the paper explores how savoring—mindful, sensory appreciation—functions as both therapeutic process and ethical orientation. DLM’s practice of healing as savoring aligns with emerging movements in the medical humanities, integrative medicine, and cultural psychiatry, while offering an alternative epistemology: resonant truth rather than generalizable evidence.

The discussion situates DLM within a global aesthetic turn in medicine and education, emphasizing cultural humility, relational presence, and moral imagination. It concludes with the vision of Inochi no Ie—a home for flourishing lives—as both personal origin and living metaphor for healing as coherence. In this view, beauty itself becomes medicine: to heal is to savor life’s wholeness.

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.

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.