Transgressing Narrative Boundaries: Exploring How Indigenous Faith—Healing Rituals from Kerala Move Beyond the Limitations of Narrative Therapy

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.