<b>Holistic Conceptions of Healing among Zulu Traditional Healers of South Africa: A Grounded Inquiry</b>

<p dir="ltr">Chapter one is a theoretical paper that explores how the Zulu people of South Africa understand health, illness, and healing in ways that are fundamentally different from Western medical approaches. Rather than viewing health as simply about the individual mind and body, Zulu healing is deeply interconnected and involves family, community, ancestors, and spiritual forces all working together. The first chapter sets up the foundation for understanding why it is crucial to study Indigenous healing practices on their own terms, especially as mental health challenges continue to affect marginalized communities whose insights about their beliefs has largely been overlooked by mainstream psychology. It goes on to assert that Zulu wellbeing and healing have been described as holistic and relational, with cosmological beliefs forming the foundation of how health is conceived across interwoven physical and spiritual worlds, where one’s health is derived through harmony and reciprocity between the community, environment, and the spiritual realms. The paper also highlights the shortcomings that exist in scholarly research on traditional healers in South Africa continues and its current struggle with the colonial gaze and legacy of academic imperialism. It further highlights gaps in prior research that have largely limited their focus on Zulu healing to topics framed using Western constructs (e.g., mental illness, efficacy of herbal remedies), which fail to capture the interconnected understanding of health, illness, and healing drawn from Indigenous knowledge systems. To address the stated gap from chapter one, chapter two is comprised of an empirical study on how Zulu healing operates from a complex, interconnected worldview that challenges Western psychology’s tendency to separate mind from body, individual from community, and physical from spiritual. The study employs constructivist grounded theory to articulate the conceptions of healing employed by Zulu traditional healers with training expertise. To better understand Zulu beliefs about healing, three research questions guided this inquiry: a) How do Zulu traditional healers understand the cause of psychological distress? b) How do Zulu traditional healers understand the healing process? c) What processes do Zulu traditional healers use for diagnosis? Ten traditional healers were interviewed in June and July 2021, representing diverse viewpoints and categories of traditional healer (<i>izangoma, izinyanga, abathandazi</i>). Analysis revealed three major categories that highlighted: 1) the centrality of spirituality in the process of healing, 2) relationality in healing, and 3) the holistic nature of healing (i.e., emphasis on mind-body connection). The paper concludes with sharing findings that demonstrate the complex, interconnected worldview that underlies Zulu healing practices and offer culturally relevant insights that challenge Western academic frameworks.</p>