Week 3 - Miguel Flores

The calling for shamans takes on a positive connotation in labeling mental health issue as the qualification for a spiritual gift of shamanic healing. In Asian culture, mental health is rarely talked about and often stigmatized, this creates a negative connotation and enables people that have mental health issues to cast doubt on their selves and to treat themselves differently. However, Shamans sees things differently and views people with mental disorders as a sign of calling for becoming a Shaman. Bounded by the Western ideologies and perceptions, mental health disorders project negative images to society and that having disorders means admittance to a facility, psychotherapy, and a barrage of prescription drugs - Western culture misses the birth of a healer and categorizes it as an illness. A lot of these sentiments echoes Mrs. Hers experience being diagnosed with schizophrenia and mental anxieties. Based on her account, she was not feeling any better despite her medications and treatment, she only got better when a master shaman examined her and confirmed that she's in the process of becoming a shaman spiritual healer. Through this account, it served as a testament that one's mental health instability can be a leading sign of an individual's ability to pick up and align foreign energies. 

A group of Filipino Americans goes back to their homeland to rediscover their roots and partake in a traditional Ifugao Shaman ritual

In my own experiences, especially with Filipino culture, possession is one of the primary sign that an individual can have the ability to not only to speak to spirits but also heal people. Such practices and rituals are condemned by many since the Philippines is composed of predominantly Catholics. Society labeled these rituals as satanic and go against the teachings of the bible. Those who believed it will be judged in hell. Sentiments like these makes it difficult for spiritual healers to freely exercise their innate abilities to speak to spirits and spiritually heal people. Catholic associations in the Philippines have established boundaries and are being more careful in pointing out the "oddities" of these practices because the church itself does commence and participate in mass spiritual healings that are often driven by mass donations and sponsorships. I have nothing against the church, but they are being careful in projecting themselves hypocrites when they condemn the practices of these independent so-called "healers." There's clearly a divisive force in which political and moral battles are being fought between a dominant religion versus a group of healers. The establishment of churches in the Philippines were remnants and products of colonization and imperialism. The Philippines, before colonial times, already have set traditions and ways of connecting with the spiritual world. Since the invasion of Spaniards, ethnic tribes in the isolated regions of the Philippines fought to preserve their ancient oral traditions. Today, only a few of these oral traditions and rituals are being remembered and it's been a struggle for surviving ethnic tribes to exist in a world of modernization and Christian-centered social beliefs.