How do Mong people cure diseases?

First, we need to understand the concept of the living body in the Mong people: A living body will include: lub cev - the physical part and tus ntsuj tus plig - the mind and soul. A normal healthy body is a healthy state of both body and soul. A sick person can be due to physical injury or mental injury or both.

Once the physical body is abnormal, that person will have obvious illnesses and diseases that can be diagnosed and treated with medicine and other methods of examination and treatment. Once the soul and spirit tus ntsuj tus plig have problems, that person will have more complicated illnesses that are more difficult to examine. Illnesses caused by the soul often have two types: (i) mind: the sick person is always in an abnormal psychological state: always insecure or easily angered - this is relatively similar to the understanding of mental health care; (ii) spirit: people with complex illnesses, not yet cured in one area, the illness spreads to another, minor illnesses, illnesses that cannot find the reason for examination and treatment.

The basic principle of treatment is to overcome the cause of the abnormal condition of the living body. A person who is sick due to physical injury will need to be cared for with medicine. Traditionally, the Mong people have kws tshuaj doctors - people who rely on knowledge preserved for many generations and guidance from the gods to diagnose and prescribe medicine based on natural factors to help the physical body recover. For example: A person who has lost blood due to a collision will need to have the wound treated with highly antiseptic plant extracts such as zaub ntsuab or cham nkaaj; at the same time, replenish the blood with blood-enriching dishes such as taab kib soup. In today's modern context, a person who is sick due to physical injury will be brought to the health care system - hospital for examination and treatment.

Meanwhile, a person who is sick due to spiritual damage needs to be listened to and resolved by the shaman txiv/naam neeb with the ua neeb ceremony.

Txiv/naam neeb originally means father or mother of neeb - a supernatural force that has the ability to connect the living world yaaj ceeb with the dead world yeeb ceeb and the supernatural world qaum ntuj. Accordingly, txiv neeb or naam neeb is a normal living person but the soul is connected to supernatural guests khua neeb whose mission is to care for and protect, and solve problems related to the human soul tus ntsuj tus plig.

A person who is sick due to a spiritual injury needs to be listened to and resolved by the shaman txiv neeb or naam neeb. This shaman, after understanding the problem through a basic examination or through the guidance of khua neeb in the basic saib yais rituals, will decide how to treat the sick person. Sometimes, just a hu plig ceremony is needed to comfort the sick person that he or she has the love, respect and wishes for peace from family members both physically and mentally. Through the hu plig ceremony and the wishes and advice of the shaman, the person with a spiritual injury will be listened to, shared and understood. But there are also times when the cause of illness or disease can come from the tus plig soul straying from the lub cev body, at that time, it is certain that ua neeb ceremonies are needed to welcome this tus plig soul back. Depending on the complexity of the journey of the lost tus plig, the ua neeb rituals also have different levels of complexity. But the basic principle of the ritual is that supernatural guests waving neeb under the direction of the shaman txiv/naam neeb will come and welcome the sick person's tus plig soul back to the lub cev body.

In reality, there are cases where illness is caused by both physical and mental damage. In such cases, the sick person needs to be cared for and examined with both medicine, medical intervention and rituals.

For the Mong people, the healer kws tshuaj and the shaman kws neeb always go together, neither is more important than the other. These two abilities were entrusted by the Creator Yawm Saub Puj Saub to their youngest son, the god Siv Yis, to be taught directly to the people to save them from suffering, to save them from disaster, and to keep the world peaceful and in order. Sometimes, people often forget the parallelism of these two masters and try to separate them into two seemingly conflicting branches. That can leave behind unpredictable consequences, the most serious and obvious of which is unjust deaths due to improper treatment.

The most famous story of the conflict between shaman and healer methods of treatment is the story of a real person named Lia. She was born into a family of Hmong immigrants to the United States in the 1980s. Lia suffered from frequent quag dab peg epilepsy. Her parents and the village shamans understood that Lia had tus plig spiritual damage and needed to be cared for through rituals; while the modern medical system in the United States believed that this was a basic epilepsy that needed to be treated with modern medicine and medical intervention. Due to language and viewpoint differences, both Lia's parents and the modern medical system in the United States insisted on treating Lia their way and strongly opposed the other's way. Lia's parents constantly protested the doctors' IVs, injections, and excessive medication, believing that it only made her sicker. The American social health system believed that her parents were abusive and incompetent in caring for her, so much so that they intervened legally and separated her from her parents and entrusted her to another American family to care for her with modern medical technology. In the end, Lia died. Anna Fadiman later recounted her painful journey in the famous book The Spirits Catches You and You Fall Down. Lia's story is not uncommon and is relatively typical among the Mong people in the current context.

There used to be many Mong women who refused to go to health centers and hospitals to give birth because these health centers and hospitals forbade them from taking the placenta home to ensure hygiene and aesthetics. But they did not know that, according to Mong people's traditional beliefs, it is mandatory for the placenta of a child to be buried in the house, because otherwise, the Mong gods would not be able to recognize the presence of this child in the world and would not be able to send the tus plig soul down to enter the lub cev body of the child. These children, after a while, would get sick and die because they were only born with a body but no soul. But, fortunately, today most health centers and hospitals in areas where Mong people live have grasped this, so the program to encourage women to give birth at health centers has guaranteed to return the placenta upon request of the families. This has rapidly increased the number of women giving birth in health centers and hospitals.

All of this teaches the Mong people, policymakers, and the health system an extremely important lesson of the need for mutual respect, working together to care for and ensure the health of the sick with both modern medical care and ensuring spiritual health care. When a Mong person is sick, they need the participation of the entire system of modern doctors, health care, and hospitals, along with spiritual comfort and assurance of faith through rituals according to the community's beliefs.