Medical Anthropology Forum The Healing Rituals of the Hyolmo Bombos of Helambu Valley (Nepal)

Notions of health and illness in the Himalayas rest on a particular theory about the body. Among several indigenous (adivasi) groups, illness is conceived as a foreign intrusion into the body or, on the contrary, it is thought to be caused by the temporary exit of life energies from it. The body is imagined as a space that could be opened and closed, emptied or filled, travelled through and even inhabited by multiple other-than-human entities. Among the Hyolmo people of Nepal, besides Buddhist lamas, we find a particular class of religious specialists called bombos, whose bodies epitomize these conditions and appear to be the ones in charge of the healing processes, being well-versed and trained in a specific set of ritual techniques employed to expel negative agents from the bodies of their patients or to call back lost life-energies or souls.