The disappearing tradition of Nepal’s traditional healers

In communities where hospitals and health posts were once distant or difficult to reach, a local healer could be the first person consulted. Improved transportation, expanding health services and greater health awareness have gradually changed that pattern. Research on rural Nepal has found that modern health services are slowly replacing some traditional healing practices, particularly as access to biomedical care improves.

For younger, formally educated Nepalis, the choice may be even more pronounced. An ethnographic study of medical practices among the Hyolmo community found that increased formal education was associated with changing treatment preferences, with some families increasingly choosing health posts and hospitals instead of dhami-jhankri.

This shift should not be interpreted simply as a conflict between tradition and science. Traditional healing encompasses a wide range of practices, and not all of them have the same purpose or evidence base. Some involve spiritual and ritual practices; others incorporate extensive knowledge of plants and locally available materials. A Nepal Health Research Council report documented traditional healers using more than 200 medicinal plants, minerals and animal or marine products in connection with the treatment of more than 300 diseases. At the same time, the report stressed the need for preservation and scientific validation of such knowledge.

For some communities, the loss of healers therefore represents more than the disappearance of an alternative form of healthcare. It can also mean the loss of oral histories, ritual songs, knowledge of local plants, community ceremonies and cultural identities.

The problem is particularly visible when the knowledge is concentrated among elderly practitioners. A study examining traditional and biomedical care pathways for mental well-being in rural Nepal found that the traditional healers interviewed had an average age of 62, while 85 percent had no formal education. The study included dhami-jhankri, a lama and female traditional healers.

Such demographics raise a basic question: who will inherit the knowledge when the current practitioners are gone?

There are signs that the answer is not necessarily “no one.” The 2024 study from Kalikot found that younger generations were not uniformly rejecting shamanic traditions. Instead, contemporary forms of shamanism were emerging alongside modern therapeutic approaches, suggesting that some practices can change rather than simply disappear.

Urban Nepal also offers a more complicated picture. Traditional healing practices have not vanished simply because people have moved to cities. A 2025 study of Dyo-mā, female faith healers in Kathmandu Valley, found that traditional spiritual and healing practices continue to have a place even within an urban environment, despite the influence of modern medicine.

The challenge, then, may be less about choosing between a hospital and a healer than about deciding which elements of traditional knowledge are worth documenting, preserving and studying.

There is also a distinction between preserving knowledge and endorsing every traditional treatment. Practices that carry potential health risks should not be protected from scrutiny simply because they are old. But dismissing an entire body of cultural knowledge can create another kind of loss—especially when that knowledge has never been properly documented.

For traditional healing to survive as a cultural heritage, younger generations may need opportunities to encounter it differently. Documentation, community archives, research into medicinal knowledge, cultural education and responsible intergenerational teaching could help preserve practices that might otherwise disappear with their last practitioners.

Nepal's traditional healers have historically stood at the intersection of health, spirituality and community life. Modernization has not erased that role overnight. Instead, migration, education, urbanization and changing ideas about healthcare are gradually weakening the system through which the knowledge is passed on.

The future of Nepal's shamans may therefore depend not on stopping modernization, but on whether the country can modernize without allowing valuable cultural knowledge to vanish undocumented.