Week 6 - Vivianne Lee

In this weeks reading the article "Spiritual Healing Practices Among Rural Postpartum Thai Women", discusses Thai spiritual healing practices on Thai women going through postpartum. Traditional postpartum practices are based on two things Humoral theory and traditional Chinese medicine. The Humoral theory is based on an assumption that the human body is composed for four elements "Earth, Fire, Air, and Water". In addition to the Humoral theory and traditional Chinese medicine other practices involve traditional Thai medicine (TTM) which integrates folk medicine and beliefs in Buddhism and animalism. Therefore, this reading relates to this weeks theme of nature/medicine and the spirit world. According to the article, these four elements "Earth, Fire, Air, and Water" compose the body thus during childbirth it creates an unbalance in the body which causes a negative effect on a woman's mind. Excessive loss of blood for example decreases the "Water" element, perineal wound damages the "Earth" element, during labor pushing changes the "Air" element, and a woman's physical efforts depletes her "Fire" element. However, TTM practitioners rebalance the self with treatments for the affected essences. Such as spiritual healing, Thai massage and herbal medicine. My question regarding the reading is if these cultural healing practices were successful for these Thai women can it be because these practices can somehow reach out to their ancestors in the spirit world allowing them to send protection and healing?

Works Cited: 

Elter, P. T., Kennedy, H. P., Chesla, C. A., & Yimyam, S. (2014). Spiritual Healing Practices Among Rural Postpartum Thai Women. Journal of Transcultural Nursing