Sukanya Guruvayoorappan’s research while affiliated with University of Trans-Disciplinary Health Sciences and Technology and other places

The role of ecology in shaping notions of well-being in indigenous healing traditions is often overlooked in contemporary well-being discourse. This study examines how ecological systems contribute to notions of well-being in two Indic healing traditions– Āyurveda and the Māvilan healing traditions. We focus on the ecological place (or eco-place) as a living and dynamic space within which cultures of knowledge emerge, and healing identities become constructed, fostering multiple somatic, psychological, social, and spiritual correspondences between its human and other-than-human members, and through which a variety of well-being experiences emerge. Three lenses are used for this purpose (i) a narrative ecology of healing, (ii) agentic herbs and co-creative healing, and (iii) healing of natural ecological systems. For the first, the concept of narrative ecology is examined, alongside how healing knowledge emerges in both Āyurveda and the Māvilan healing traditions from human and other-than-human understandings of the world; for the second, we examine how, despite significantly differing engagements with forest ecosystems, the notion of plant-agency can recast healing as a co-creative process in both traditions. For the third, we explore ideas regarding other-than-human illness and therapeutics in Āyurveda and the Māvilan healing traditions.

This paper focuses on two indigenous healing rituals from Kerala, the South- Western state of India. The first one is uzhinjuvāngal, a ritual of warding off evil spirits. It is practised as part of the mantravāda healing tradition, at pūṅkuṭil mana, an ancestral house belonging to brahmin priests. The second is, gaddika, a ritualistic art form practised as part of ritual healing by the Aṭiyān, a scheduled tribal community residing in the Wayanad district of Kerala. These faith healing practices are conducted complementary to biomedical treatments and provide relief to patients. This must be understood in their rich cultural context. As an alternative to modern medicine, unique traditional healing rituals are used to provide specific treatments based on the antiquity and integrity of beliefs and practices. Significant aspects including phenomenological and narrative influences which contribute to the efficacy of these practices were observed from ethnographic data collection after the emerging narratives were analysed thematically. Certain similarities can be found between narrative therapy and how these faith-healing practices employ narratives. Deriving from primary research, this paper argues that these practices go beyond the limitations of narrative therapy, employing metaphors, embodied ritualistic experiences and fictive imagination.