Week 2: Christina Lukban

Week 2

In this week’s reading The Pa Lor Story - The Journey Between Two Worlds, we discuss the theme of spirit healers in the form of shamans. What intrigued me the most about Lor’s story in being a shaman was how even growing up, she never seemed to really connect with the idea of Shamanism. You would think that if someone has a type of gift as powerful as helping people and crossing into the spirit world, I would have believed that Lor was “chosen” because she was more connected to Shamanism or wanted to become a Shaman and practiced it. However, in Lor’s case, she was introduced to the practices of Shamanism but didn’t understand much of it as a child and was even Christian. She didn’t seem like the type of person who would have been chosen, but she was and it makes me think of my question:

How can one be “qualified” to be chosen to be a shaman? Is just it someone’s destiny ever since they were young, is it a gift they were given because of something they did in their lifetime, etc.? Can we look at patterns of similarities in why certain people have been chosen to be shamans to answer this?

What also interested me about Lor’s story was how even as a shaman, she continued to go to Sacramento State (just 20 minutes away from us!) and got her degree. Despite her having this incredibly unique gift, it’s interesting how this hasn’t completely taken over her life. She had a life before she was a shaman and it’s important to remember that she is still a person just like everyone else despite this power. There could be people, just like her with such a great purpose, who could be around us everyday.  As a society, I wish people would be more open-minded on this type of practice. If this is a gift meant to heal, why do people belittle such a practice in comparison to religion? A quote I really like in the article was when they were discussing having shaman’s present in working with doctors, “The collaborative is a partnership of nine community organizations advocating for culturally and linguistically competent care in the California health system to help Hmong people” (pg. 4). Since I am planning on working in the health care industry, I believe that in order to treat patients effectively, it’s important to look at who they are holistically beyond their injuries/diseases. A lot of the time, in order to heal patients, we must look and relate to them in a cultural sense to really help them. I am a strong advocate for having more people such as shamans and spirit healers in general be more present in hospitals to heal people of all different cultures and backgrounds.

Image: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/us/20shaman.html