subject: A Miracle Healing in Thailand [print this page] What pictures does our mind manifest when we think about Thailand? Maybe beautiful beach scenes, tropical climate, exotic culture, and Thai massage. But the miraculous healing event of this story is likely the most unusual aspect of Thailand.
All cultures on the planet have some system of healing. Human beings have always had physical and emotional problems, be it injuries, sickness or any other trauma. Every culture has always needed healing professions. Such healing systems range from shamanic approaches to modern medicine with innumerable varieties in between.
Even with all the advances of modern medicine, millions of people in developed nations still seek out more traditional or alternative approaches. Many cultures in the less developed areas around the globe have used those traditional therapies for many centuries as their only available cures.
No healing system works 100 percent of the time (and that includes modern medicine), but all of them have their uses and they work well enough to have survived the test of time during centuries of practical application. I know the true story of a miraculous and quite unusual healing here in Thailand.
It involves Jang, a girl from a southern province of Thailand who was 14 years old at the time. She had contracted a serious skin condition on her abdomen and back. Several visits to medical doctors and hospitals provided no relief and no cure. This disease afflicts quite quite a few Thais in rural areas and in severe cases results in death.
Jang exhausted all her options with modern medicine and she came close to dying. Finally, as a last resort her parents sought help from a local healer, an unassuming and entirely uneducated elderly villager who had been performing healings on his fellow villagers for decades. He took a look at her and proclaimed that he could cure her.
The old man started chewing on some plant substance which seemed to be Betel nuts and leaves. Betel nuts are chewed by many Asians for their stimulating effect. You can easily tell who chews it since with regular use it stains teeth and gums red and black. You cannot swallow the leaves and therefore people always spit out blood red streams of saliva mixed with betel - it looks pretty ugly.
After chewing for a while, the old healer spat the blood-red substance on the girl's abdomen and then rubbed it in. At the same time he blew on her belly and uttered some chants. There is no way of knowing what exactly he was doing, but after three days of these treatments, Jang totally recovered from the life threatening disease.
After 25 years the evidence of the disease is still visible as scars, but it was permanently cured. The old shaman miraculously succeeded where the doctors had sent Jang home to die. All he asked for his services was the equivalent of US$ 3.- and two chickens which was generally all the villagers could afford.
Before you say that this is a ridiculous story how can spitting on someone cure anything I would like to remind you that one of the most famous healers in history, Jesus, healed a blind man by spitting into his eyes (Mark 8,28).
What makes this Thai healing case very authentic is that Jang is not a person I heard about from someone else, but she is my partner. I have been living with her for many years, and I have seen the scars.
There are many such healing stories everywhere in the world. While we might call them miracles, they are commonplace occurences for simple villagers all over the world. However the people practicing these methods see nothing miraculous in them. The old shaman in this southern Thai town had been healing people for most of his life, and for him it was just another day at work. He never thought of himself as a miracle man. The villagers can attest to many of his successes. He might not have been successful in every case and with everyone, but he did save the life of my partner Jang.
