The Navajo people practice beliefs and traditions about health that are deeply rooted in their religious faith. Navajo healing practices entail restoring the well-being and harmony to an individual’s lifestyle. First, most of the Navajo ceremonies are for the protection from bad luck while others are done particularly for healing. The ceremonies seek to restore and sustain the physical, psychological and spiritual well-being. The sick Navajo seeks out the services of medicine men whenever s/he lacks harmony. The ceremonies are essential to avoid the wrath of the spirits who provide healing to the Navajo people.
The Navajo people embrace such ceremonies partly due to the inadequate health services provided by the government. Navajos believe that potential causes of sickness emanate from breaking taboos thus they find it suitable to seek health care services from medicine men who perform special ceremonies to restore balance in their lives. The Navajo spiritual practice involves rituals used for setting people free from curses. Nonetheless, Navajos selectively incorporate new healing methods when proved helpful but not undermining their traditions and beliefs.
Through the established mechanisms of traditional healing, the Navajo people generated a strong belief in the healing power of medicine men and hand shakers. By using about 450 herb species for medicine, the patient received healing from different illness. Therefore, the Navajo healing process was viewed as holistic since it focused on restoring balance to the patient. Contrarily, in the Western world the emphasis was on healing specified complications. The healers have for a long time acted as a link between the Holy people to diagnose and treat the sick via ceremonies. In spite of the Western Medicine efforts to establish itself within the Navajo community during the early 1990s, Navajo people remained rooted to their faith.
With the mounting pressure to alleviate the traditional Navajo practices, the Navajo people came up with Medicine Man’s Association (MMA). MMA sought to develop new health care programs that considered services of the Navajo healers as well as those of the western medical practitioners. Thus, this implied how Navajo folk medicine had a widespread influence when it came to selecting the medication system. Besides, there was the fear of incurring the wrath of the curse cast by the spirits if Navajo people retracted from their religious traditions.