Page 121 - Cultural Competence in Health Education

A Spiritually Grounded and Culturally Responsive Approach 99

person, and healers are religious specialists. The most ancient and common of these
healers is the shaman, followed by spirit mediums, priests or ritualists, holy persons
who heal with their touch or sight, and prescriptionists who prescribe herbs, ritual, and
prayers. All of these are present in the various forms of alternative and folk medicine
and are argued to have correlates within Christian healing practices even today (Kins-
ley, 1996; Baer, 2001). Because I was not planning to become a spiritual healer, this
literature did not offer me a practice prototype. But it did offer valuable information
about traditional healing ’ s central themes (Kinsley, 1996). My goal was to move past
merely knowing and accepting that folk healing still occurs, so that I could allow for
and support the spiritual as my patients defined it as necessary to their lives, and could

create environments that would foster this process. So I wanted to address the tradi-
tional healing themes that made sense within my practice.
The themes of confession and of transference and objectification of illness (Kinsley,

1996) fell well within my previous experience, both as therapist and as one who
worked with physical trauma. Much of nursing and psychotherapy is about being with
a person through her unburdening and catharsis around regrettable events. This is heal-
ing if done without judgment or moralizing to enforce some level of social control.
Sometimes therapeutic activities purposefully use the creation and destruction of a
symbol of illness or anything negative a person wishes to move beyond. My clinical
experiences with trauma patients convinced me that effective working with them
involves a taking in and taking on of aspects of their experience, an almost tangible
sharing of their burden, best expressed in the concepts of transpersonal psychology
(Daniels, 2005).
Effective healers traditionally have prestige, confidence, and empathy (Kinsley,

1996). Prestige would be difficult to negotiate and use cross - culturally, so my personal

emphasis has been on confidence and empathy. By knowing exactly what I can and
cannot do and what I have to offer in a specific setting, and by showing empathy, often

by revealing personal experiences of overcoming, I have found ways to operate within
this theme. Sometimes just expressing genuine interest in the day - to - day lives and
problems of people who never expected you to be interested is quite enough to garner
a type of prestige. One of the most important themes and roles of healers is to assign
meaning to illness. Relating the illness to other aspects of the patient ’ s life and helping
to restore harmony is the goal. I knew this also from experience, and knew that it
requires a certain level of agreement of worldview between patient and care provider.
In a multicultural context it became more important to help a person uncover how he
was making such meaning, asking himself if this construction rang true within his
belief system, and perhaps helping him to identify a person with a worldview more
similar to his to help him with this task.

The most significant new learning about healing themes came from understanding
sacred space, pilgrimage, and healing contexts, and then the importance of group soli-
darity in healing (Kinsley, 1996). Sacred space and sacred places have always been
central to healing. Usually sacred space is established temporarily for healing and ritu-
als. There may be aspects of drama, decoration with objects from nature or artifacts of
material culture, symbolic acts, singing, chanting, and dance.

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