Essay The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

In Hmong’s, they have their own traditional beliefs in which they hardly ever alter due to a different atmosphere. Some of the Hmong beliefs are they prefer traditional medicine, are culturally active, host ritual ceremonies, and are spirituality influenced. In the book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, refers to the Hmong culture and their beliefs on medicine while their baby Lia Lee, is suffering from epilepsy in which they have a hard decision. Traditional Hmong’s have their own medicinal beliefs which they obey prior to obtaining Western medicine. The gulf between Western medicine and Hmong health beliefs is an impossible abyss. Also, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down describes the life of Hmong refugees assimilating to

What happens when two very different or even mutually exclusive cultural perspective are forced into contact with one another? In Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, there is a division between the shamanistic insubordinate cultural of Hmong refugees in Merced, California and the cold analytical approach of western medicine. In the early 1980s, the child of a Hmong refugee family in Merced, California is born with epilepsy, her name is Lia Lee. Anne Fadiman traces the interaction between these two cultures and Lia’s disease, she reviews that misunderstanding and miscommunication can have calamitous consequences for all involved. The author introduces many characters throughout the book and they all

What do you think of traditional Hmong birth practices (pp. 3-5)? Compare them to the techniques used when Lia was born (p. 7). How do Hmong and American birth practices differ?

With the loud noise of a slamming door the family believed that Lia’s spirit had been frightened and left the body causing the sickness she was experiencing. The family saw the seizures as an illness of some distinction. In the Hmong culture epileptics often become shamans. The chapter goes on to tell the child’s story about multiple trips to the Hospital Emergency Room. It speaks about the lack of communication surrounding the child’s symptoms. The family is unable, and the medical team unaware of the lack of communication about medical dosages. The doctors have no idea about parental refusal to give certain medicines due to mistrust, misunderstandings, and behavioral side effects. The doctors do not attempt to develop more empathy with the traditional Hmong lifestyle or try to learn more about the Hmong culture. The dichotomy between the Hmong's perceived spiritual factors and the Americans' perceived scientific factors comprises the overall theme.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (1997) is an ethnography written by Anne Faidman. It tells the story of Lia Lee, a Hmong girl with severe epilepsy, and her family’s journey with managing the condition and the cultural barriers that posed great challenges in Lia’s care. Lia was diagnosed with epilepsy at age 1. It was her family’s opinion that the condition was a spiritual gift. Lia’s parents, Nao Kao and Foua, were wary of the American medical system, preferring to treat Lia in the Hmong way. Under the more spiritually focused care of her parents, Lia continued to have severe seizures; at the age of 4 ½, she slipped into a coma that would last the rest of her life. This book serves as a testament to the importance of cultural competency

The Lees, a Hmong family, came to the United States in the 1970s as refugees from Laos, and lived in Merced, California. Unlike most immigrants, the Hmong population was less amenable to assimilation. The traditional health beliefs and practices of the Hmong population were disputed by the practices of Western medicine. This became very event when the Lees took their three-month-old daughter, Lia Lee, to the emergency room in Merced. Lia was diagnosed with epilepsy a disease that had two different meaning among the Hmong population and Western medicine.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman is about the cross-cultural ethics in medicine. The book is about a small Hmong child named Lia Lee, who had epilepsy. Epilepsy is called, quag dab peg1 in the Hmong culture that translates to the spirit catches you and you fall down. In the Hmong culture this illness is sign of distinction and divinity, because most Hmong epileptics become shaman, or as the Hmong call them, txiv neeb2. These shamans are special people imbued with healing spirits, and are held to those having high morale character, so to Lia's parents, Foua Yang and Nao Kao Lee, the disease was both a gift and a curse. The main question in this case was could Lia have survived if her parent's and the doctors overcame

Lia Lee was a Hmong infant born with epilepsy. Lia’s parents were immigrants to a Western nation. However, the parents held tightly onto traditional beliefs from their native country. The incongruent belief structure of the East and West created difficulty when the two systems collided in an effort to care for Lia Lee. Specifically, when the drug therapy prescribed for Lia Lee was not followed by her parents. Subsequently the child’s medical team contacted child services, which lead to Lia’s removal from her family. The result of the cultural misunderstanding was fragmented family. In addition to fueling the distrust of the western healthcare system by an already marginalized community.

All communication is cultural. It draws on ways we have learned to speak and give nonverbal messages. We do not always communicate the same way from day to day, since factors like individual personality, mood, and the context of the situation interact with the variety of cultural influences we have internalized that influence our choices. Communication is interactive, so an important influence on its effectiveness is our relationship with others. Do they hear and understand what we are trying to say? Are they listening well? Are we listening well in response? Do their responses show that they understand the words and the meanings behind the words we have chosen? Is the mood positive and receptive? Is there trust between them and us? Are there differences that relate to ineffective communication, divergent goals or interests, or fundamentally different ways of seeing the world? The answers to these questions will give us some clues about the effectiveness of our communication and the ease with which we may be able to move through conflict. The challenge is that even with all the good will in the world, miscommunication is likely to happen, especially when there are significant cultural differences between communicators. Miscommunication may lead to conflict, or aggravate conflict that already exists, or in the sad of case of girl developing epilepsy and both her parent’s Hmong culturally clashing with her Western medicine

We can see that there was a misunderstanding between the Lee’s and the doctor. Both parties explained the view on Lia’s case but from a biased perspective within their own culture. Lia's doctors strongly opinionated to treat her disease with medication, however her parents felt that being given medication would restrict with the spiritual healing given by a Hmong shaman.

List at least 7 practical lessons that can be summarized in a sentence Provide an anecdote from the history of Barefoot Wines that illustrates each of the nuggets you identify.

Salzman (2000) describes the journey of Sister John, a nun at the Carmelite convent in Los Angeles. She experiences headaches that develop into deep spiritual episodes, which her doctor later informs her, are the symptoms of her recurring seizures. Sister John has temporal-lobe epilepsy and her doctor explains that it, “tend[s] to be more psychological” (Salzman, 2000, p.68). Sister John’s spiritual episodes were presumably caused by her medical condition.

100 years ago there were only a few, 50 years ago there was a couple 100, now it’s 2027 there’s 100,000 of us, walking on Earth as we speak. The “us” I’m talking about is Spirit Seekers. Spirit Seekers are people who have a genetic ability to see people’s true color, their spirit. When we see people’s spirit, we see shades and tints of colors, the darker a color the more in trouble the person is. You may think we’re crazy, we may be, but we can see your monsters and demons you’ve faced. We see the real you. We take an oath to never share anyone’s secret and even we break that oath we’re banished to the center of the Earth, with our ability stripped. The catch with all of this because there is always a catch is we don’t have emotion.

Unconditional love can be described as a pure affection bereft of circumstance. It is a true positive regard of others that bares no judgment. In a sense, unconditional love has no boundaries. In the film What Dreams May Come, the boundary between life and death fades and a family’s bond is tested. Tragedy by tragedy, unconditional love and guilt play major roles in the defiance of the laws of death. Chris Nielsen, the main character of the film, travels to the depths of the afterlife to find his beloved wife Annie and restore his family. In an epic journey that questions the very fabric of reality and faith, the Nielson family overcomes all odds and is reunited in the end. Throughout the film, unconditional love is represented in the

     Spirituality is held by all cultures. It is such an important theme; it has been used in many books over the centuries. Both Isebel Allende's House of the spirits and Herman Hesse's Siddhartha show the same spiritual characteristics. In House of the spirits theres Clara, who believes that her powers can be used to help others, and her son, Nicholas, who uses the beliefs of spirituality for commercial venues. In Siddhartha, we see Siddhartha who believes that through traveling, both physically and mentally, he will achieve enlightenment. While, Govinda believes that that hearing strictly the doctrine will be a path to enlightenment. From all of these characters we see that even though the beliefs are