How is the human being understood?
Which image of the person underlies a healing tradition?
Building on my many years of work with Traditional Chinese Medicine, I want to understand and document how different healing traditions view the human being, health, illness and healing. At the centre are not only individual medicinal plants, but also the knowledge, the experiences and the cultural contexts in which they are applied.
Zanzibar and East Africa form an important starting point for this work. Encounters with traditional healers, plant experts, researchers and medical institutions are intended to help document local plant and experiential knowledge and to understand it better from within its respective context.
At the same time, I am interested in the differences, parallels and points of contact that emerge in relation to other traditional medical systems and healing philosophies.
UnderstandDocumentMake connections visiblePut into relation
Respectful encounter instead of standardisation
Healing Roots does not seek to equate or unify these perspectives, nor to construct a new healing system from them. At the centre are respectful encounter, documentation and the willingness to understand different perspectives first from within their own cultural context.
In the long term, this is intended to grow into a documentation of medicinal plants, healing traditions and the people who preserve this knowledge – starting from Zanzibar and following historical and cultural connections between East Africa, Arabia and Asia.
Guiding questions
Questions that
interest me:
What does health mean?
What is health measured against – and by whom?
How are illness and imbalance explained?
Which explanatory models shape diagnosis and treatment?
What role do plants, nutrition, touch and movement play?
What is used to treat – and in which order?
What significance do community, nature and spirituality have?
Where does medicine end and culture begin?
Where do points of contact appear?
What connects different traditions despite all their differences?
Medicinal Plant Garden
A place that grows
The planned medicinal plant and documentation garden on Zanzibar is a concrete part of the larger project. It is to become a living place where local medicinal and useful plants are cultivated and documented, and where knowledge, encounter and exchange can find space.
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Exchange & collaboration
Whether professional exchange, questions about the project or interest in working together – I look forward to your message.
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