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<p>This article analyzes the meanings attributed to illness and suffering by holistic healers and spiritual seekers in southern Chile, a region marked by the growing presence of healing ventures associated with new spiritualities. Methodologically, it is a qualitative study based on extensive fieldwork and interviews with 39 participants (19 healers/therapists and 20 seekers/consultants) from the local holistic scene. The results show that illness is understood as an imbalance, a spiritual wound, a vital overload, or the result of negative supernatural forces, while suffering is interpreted as personal responsibility, a learning opportunity, and a consequence of attachment. We discuss how these meanings provide an alternative sense-making framework to the biomedical model and promote subjective agency in healing. However, we also problematize the tendencies toward excessive individual responsibility, convergence with the values of neoliberal therapeutic culture, and the risk of cultural appropriation of elements from Indigenous or local spiritual traditions. Thus, the holistic environment appears as both a meaning-making and caregiving dispositif and as a space of symbolic dispute, new subjective imperatives, and localized sociocultural tensions.</p>

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Illness and Suffering in the Discourse of Spiritual Holistic Seekers and Healers in Southern Chile

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2025年9月19日

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  • Rodrigo Navarrete Saavedra,
  • René Gallardo Vergara

摘要

This article analyzes the meanings attributed to illness and suffering by holistic healers and spiritual seekers in southern Chile, a region marked by the growing presence of healing ventures associated with new spiritualities. Methodologically, it is a qualitative study based on extensive fieldwork and interviews with 39 participants (19 healers/therapists and 20 seekers/consultants) from the local holistic scene. The results show that illness is understood as an imbalance, a spiritual wound, a vital overload, or the result of negative supernatural forces, while suffering is interpreted as personal responsibility, a learning opportunity, and a consequence of attachment. We discuss how these meanings provide an alternative sense-making framework to the biomedical model and promote subjective agency in healing. However, we also problematize the tendencies toward excessive individual responsibility, convergence with the values of neoliberal therapeutic culture, and the risk of cultural appropriation of elements from Indigenous or local spiritual traditions. Thus, the holistic environment appears as both a meaning-making and caregiving dispositif and as a space of symbolic dispute, new subjective imperatives, and localized sociocultural tensions.