Chime led me down a narrow grass pathway at Tarshi Palkhiel, the Tibetan refugee settlement on the outskirts of Pokhara, Nepal where he’d grown up. Midway down the lane he stopped before a diminutive man with a long gray ponytail and gleaming onyx eyes. The elder Tibetan grasped my translator’s hands between his own as they bowed and touched foreheads in a respectful greeting. Pau Nyima Dhondup, the village shaman, or Lhapa, flashed a broad smile and considered me for a long moment, his eyes broadcasting delight and laughter, along with a  healthy dose of mischief. Shepherding us to his modest home, the shaman swept aside a floor-length cloth covering the front door and gestured for me to sit on a daybed pushed up against the near wall of his front room.

Pau Nyima, who practices a shamanic tradition passed down through his maternal bloodline, is one of only two known living Tibetan shamans remaining in the world today, according to the Foundation for Shamanic Studies in Mill Valley, California. He was chosen to continue his family’s healing tradition when he entered puberty and started having spiritual experiences that indicated his fate was to be a Lhapa. In addition to sucking illnesses out of a body, with actual objects being spit out to show the patient the source of their illness, shamanic treatments can also include a soul retrieval ceremony, a ceremony to release a deceased soul who is stuck into the afterlife, or a ritual to end misfortune that causes child after child in a family to die. The shaman drew up a chair in front of me and gave instructions to Chime.

“He wants you to support right elbow in palm of left hand and bend arm up in air.”

He felt the pulse at my wrist and motioned for me to switch arms in order to repeat the process on the other arm. Scooting back his chair to the middle of the room, he listened attentively as Chime described the pain in my left hip and knee and chortled when he demonstrated how I have to open my mouth wide to relieve the muscular tightness in my jaw, then asked questions.

“How old you are?” Chime inquired.

“Fifty-eight.”

“Ahhh!” the shaman exclaimed, as if learning my age had given him a major clue to my health.

“What country?”

“USA. But I don’t live there any more.”

Chime explained that I am a perpetual traveler with no permanent home, that I move from place to place around the world in search of travel stories. Satisfied that he had all the necessary information, Pau Nyima sat cross-legged on a second daybed on the other side of the small room. While donning a gold silk brocade apron and cape, he warned that we could take photos during part of the ceremony, but strongly recommended that we not use the camera once his body was taken over by the spirit because the deity often breaks things. He finished off his attire with an ornate green, blue and red headdress while his mediator, who runs the ceremony once the shaman is possessed, set up rice offerings, lit candles, and positioned photos of the shaman’s various deities on the altar.

Mediator prepares the altar prior to shamanic ceremony

“You must believe,” he warned gravely before beginning. His right hand held an hourglass-shaped, double-sided hand drum that represented two inverted skulls and symbolized the joining of female and male energies. Two clappers attached to strings hanging from the drum’s handle flew through the air as he rotated his wrist back and forth, striking the animal-hide drum in a four-beat rhythm, interspersed with chiming from a bell held in his left hand.

“You have two white stars in the east, a yellow one in the south, blue in the north and red in the west. You must pray only to Buddha – no other gods,” Chime translated for me. The shaman stopped briefly to add a second headdress that spread out behind him like rainbow angel wings and draped it with multi-colored silk scarves. Seconds later, while chanting intensely, a shudder passed through his body and a grimacing, contorted visage appeared superimposed on his face. He uttered a sharp yelp and threw a handful of silk scarves at me. Jumping off the daybed, he spread his arms wide and balanced on one foot, holding the other foot high in the air as if preparing to throw a karate kick. Nyenchen Thanglha, one of the strongest Tibetan deities, had taken control of his body.

Following a brief dance around the center of the room, Pau Nyima resumed his seat and motioned for me to sit directly in front of him on a low wicker stool. Almost immediately, he sprang forward from his sitting position and chomped the air above my upper left arm. The mediator poured a small amount of water into a tin dish and held it as the shaman spit out an inch-long slug that looked like a dark gray caterpillar; it squirmed around in the water, turned black and eventually stopped moving. Unexpectedly, the shaman lunged at me again, this time grazing my left left arm just above the elbow, and spit out a second, blacker slug. As I returned to my seat on the daybed, my arm turned ice cold and tingly.

Can’t view the above YouTube video of a Shamanic Healing Ceremony in Pokhara, Nepal? Click here.

Shaman removed two black slugs - negative spirits - from my left arm and shoulder

Continue reading →

You might also like: