Understanding Native American healing practices

Abstract

Counselor cultural competency with respect to Native Americans requires understanding of common healing practices and ceremonies and of their spiritual significance. Historical trauma serves as a general backdrop for Native America experience and identity. Particular tribal practices and the individual's degree of affiliation with such practices provide a more specific context for client worldview. Knowledge of the symbolic significance of common ceremonies and healing practices will support counseling efforts to be relevant and effective with respect to Native American clients. Direct interaction and involvement with Native American communities facilitate a deeper understanding of Native American cultural identity and healing practices.

Religious and Spiritual Practices Among Homeless Urban American Indians and Alaska Natives with Severe Alcohol Problems

“…Common pan-tribal spiritual practices include prayer, sweat lodges, drumming, dancing, smudging ceremonies, pipe ceremonies, and traditional medicine. Through these practices individuals and groups express gratitude; receive purification and healing; and maintain harmony with the cosmos and nature, among kinship and community relations, and between one’s mind, body, and spirit (Portman & Garrett, 2006; Rybak & Decker-Fitts, 2009). …”

Enriching Group Counseling Through Integrating Yoga Concepts and Practices

“…Although it is important to keep in mind the great diversity among Native Americans, the Native American Medicine Wheel forms a conceptual map that fits the world view of many Native Americans in that it takes into account the multiple dimensions of life in a holistic manner including spirit, nature, mind, and physical body (Coggins, 1990;Garrett, 1998;Rybak & Decker-Fitts, 2009;. The Medicine Wheel promotes awareness of the broad dimensions of life and encourages a wider sense of identity not limited to certain aspects such as income level or social status that can so easily lead to disharmony and depression when such issues become the exclusive focus of attention.…”

“…Poor health is an indication of disharmony with important aspects of nature. Healing is a process of restoring that lost harmony, but it is not all the same as a cure as in allopathic medicine (Rybak & Decker-Fitts, 2009;Rybak, Lakota-Eastin, & Robbins, 2004;Thomason, 1991).…”

Nursing’s metaparadigm, climate change and planetary health

“…While Fawcett's (1984) metaparadigm has received much criticism and several authors have debated its usefulness (Allen, 2004(Allen, , 2014Bender, 2018;Litchfield & Jónsdóttir, 2008;Morse, 2016;Risjord, 2010;Thorne et al, 1998), it remains a significant historical influence on the nursing discipline and thus the nursing profession. (Ryback & Decker-Fitts, 2009). So let the reader make note that when we refer to 'modern nursing', understand what we really mean is 'modern nursing as it is done in North America', and that specific form of nursing has typically been associated with the work of Florence Nightingale.…”