Week 3- Marisa Gee
“What a Shaman Sees in a Mental
Hospital,” was an intriguing article. It really captured the difference between
how the industrialized West views mental illness versus from a more spiritual
point of view. The way that Dr. Some explained mental illness as the merging of
incompatible energies that need to either be realigned in the case of the
calling of a new spirit healer or the removal of one of the energies in the
case of a negative energy taking over made me personally reevaluate how I have
been taught to view mental illness. I also noticed a general trend that mental
illness at least in the view of the West is almost always in a reductive light,
it is the loss of function and ability whereas in a more shamanistic point of
view it more often than not means the gaining of abilities and
responsibility. Lastly from this article
the part where Dr. Some discusses the connection between nature and energy
really resonated with me as well. I feel that as a whole our society tends to
disregard nature and the importance of the natural world. Given this context, I
wonder if this disconnect with nature is the reason for the high rates of
mental illness in our society? And what can be done to convince those who do
not value nature as a being with its own rights to view nature and our
connection with it as essential and worth preserving?
Shana Bulhan Haydock’s series of
essays provided an interesting perspective on holistic medicine. Her article
was interesting because she rejected both western medicine and holistic
medicine since she felt they were both limiting in their own ways. She also
mentioned the colonial nature of Western medicine and the way I interpreted
this was that the numerous drugs prescribed aim to colonize one’s mind to “normal.”
The Patient tarot card I think went
along perfectly with both readings. The tarot card served to remind us that we
are “all guests in our healthy bodies,” which is similar to Dr. Some’s line of
reasoning that energies simply occupy our physical selves. The Patient tarot
card is also closely in line with what Haydock advocates in terms of accepting
our imperfect selves even if that includes the acceptance of potential illness.
References
The Patient (tarot card)
Stephanie Marohn with Malidoma Patrice Some. “What a Shaman
Sees in a Mental Hospital.”
Shana Bulhan Haydock. “Fucked Up: I Would Always Rather be Abnormal
than Holistic.” in Open in Emergency.
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