Healing words

In the basement of a plush South Delhi residence on a relaxed Sunday summer afternoon, a small motley group of men and women, all city residents, are huddled close to a slim, energetic young man exuding a warm vibe.

They are seated on floor cushions, sipping tea from mugs, and there are neatly arranged sheets of white paper and colourful crayons around them. Somewhat metaphorical of the reason they are there. The man in the middle leans over a blank sheet, deftly drawing a circular diagram in various hues, known as the mandala. The participants pick up their crayons and follow suit as they listen to its significance: a popular spiritual symbol in many Indian religions that represents the universe.

Salil Koitsu Mukhia, 35, has come all the way from Darjeeling to hold a workshop on shamanic storytelling and dreamwork, called ‘Medicine Stories: The Way of the Inner Transformation’. He uses the mandala drawing to explain to his listeners the powers of the mind, and regales them with anecdotes from his village that include the tradition of a man and woman living together for three years before deciding to marry, how when his finger got cut off in an accident and there was no hospital nearby, a mix of spit and honey healed it in four days (the group responds with a collective gasp), the concept of time, and how lucid dreaming works.... “To make dream recall a habit, lie on your tummy, have no milk and less salt before sleeping,” he advises.

Mukhia is the founder of the Acoustic Traditional and the Festival of Indigenous Storytellers that began in 2010. He is from the Kiranti indigenous community of the Eastern Himalayas, belonging to the Bung-Naa clan of the Koinch group—a small linguistic tribe with approximately 5,000 members today. Initiated into shamanism (an ancient healing tradition and way of life) as a child, Mukhia (meaning ‘head hunter’) documents traditions of tribal cultures and tells their disappearing stories. He is considered both a storyteller and healer, whose projects such as ‘One Tribe’, ‘Stories on the Verge’ and ‘Elder Earth’ weave knowledge of stories, sounds and healing. In workshops such as these, he helps people tap into the power of their minds and heal through storytelling techniques. “It is all about energy systems. Even compassion is a frequency,” he says, introducing the concept of animal spirit guide to the group.

Mukhia prefers interactive to instructional, peppering the healing traditions with personal experiences. Every comment from a participant leads to a new story or anecdote from Mukhia. Having studied music for a long time, he also uses sounds to explain, such as demonstrating the ‘feminine pitch’ of a non-musical drum in shamanism. “Nature doesn’t understand words. It knows sounds and colours. We are multi-cellular beings. Feeling is seed, thought isn’t seed. Imagination is reality in progress. Transformation and change always occur at the threshold. That’s why Buddha advocated the middle path,” he tells the group.

Mukhia approaches human energy like a doctor. Going behind each participant’s back, he senses frequency levels to tell them which area of their body needs healing and why. Mukhia was initiated into shamanism at the young age of five. “A shaman is a medium between this world and that world [of spirits]. But I am not a disciplined practitioner. Shamanism doesn’t have a code. At the heart of this practice is the story. The mandala practice empowers the imagination, there are no rights or wrongs.” He is quick to add that shamanism is not religious and the idea isn’t to upset any deity or follower. “Dreams are a powerful way to understand the self. The dreamwork in shamanism is like the Amazon forest of your life.”

Many view such practices as primitive in a world caught between religious pressures and scientific ways. “I have read a lot, pursued music intensely, lived in a monastery in Nepal as instructed by my guide.... I got in touch with mountain and forest music. Every piece of music, cloth and community has its origin in stories. These specific stories could be called sacred laws because they define the pattern of folklore and explain spiritual histories.” Mukhia also lived a ‘normal’ city life, working with different environmental organisations to deepen his understanding, but something kept pulling him back. “I felt I should hear these stories, retell them and reconnect with my traditions. In due course, the stories strengthened me and I realised we are nobody without our stories, across all cultures,” he says. “Most tribal societies don’t have written scripts, their indigenous knowledge over thousands of years is in their stories. People say these are superstitions, like don’t eat fish during certain months. But there is a scientific reason for it. Fish swim up to mate and lay eggs during that time. If we eat them now, we won’t have fish for the following year. Do you know water molecules change according to our feelings? The collective attitude is that tribals are backward. But it was the Jarawa tribe that survived the tsunami in 2004 while others perished. The indigenous identity is important to today’s urban context.”

How does he see his role in society as a storyteller? “It is an important one. Sadly, there are only three shamans left in my community. Stories are major tools to program ourselves. Oral skills are important faculties that we are losing today. Stories ignite listening and imagination. The world itself is based on one story or the other, isn’t it?” he asks, with a mysterious smile.

A CALL OF THE SPIRITS

Shamanism is an ancient practice in which the practitioner is said to reach an altered state of consciousness—interact with ‘spirits’—and transfer those energies back into the world. The idea is to act as an intermediary between the known world and the unknown realm, where the body is healed by ‘mending the soul’, or by bringing it into a state of balance, drawing remedies from nature. One of the ideas is that the healer would have undergone sickness himself or herself to understand it and thereby be able to heal others. Besides healing, a shaman preserves tradition by storytelling and songs.