Theory and research on the healing practices of Indigenous communities around the globe have often been influenced by models of “symbolic healing” that privilege the way patients consciously interpret or derive meaning from a healing encounter. In our work with a group of Q’eqchi’ Maya healers in southern Belize, these aspects of “symbolic healing” are not always present. Such empirical observations force us to reach beyond models of symbolic healing to understand how healing might prove effective. Through the extended analysis of a single case study of rahil ch’ool or “depression,” we propose to advance understanding of forms of healing which are not dependent on a shared “mythic” or “assumptive world” between patient and healer or where therapeutic efficacy does not rely on the patient’s ability to “believe” in or consciously “know” what is occurring during treatment. In this we demonstrate how the body, as a site of experience, transformation, and communication, becomes the therapeutic locus in healing encounters of this kind and argue that embodied mediums of sensorial experience be considered central in attempts to understand healing efficacy.
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