[olau]

One thing I've learned over time is that leaving the magical aspects aside performing a ritual can have an advantageous emotional effect on the participants.

A silly example: A distant relative explained how he'd seen a stone healer about curing his smoking addiction. We're talking about a down-to-earth man, a small-scale factory owner. She did a ritual involving burning incense and putting stones on his back. Then as he was getting ready to leave, she said to him: "Oh, by the way, no more smoking, not even nicotine gum". He promptly quit smoking completely.

I think the odd situation of the ritual prepared his mind to fully accept the conclusion. I don't know how effective this stone healer is overall compared to other means of quitting smoking. But it was impressively efficient for my relative, just a one hour job.

[biancaregulski]

I've heard similar things from missionaries who have lived in very remote cultures with witch doctors who will take someone who's extremely sick and feeble to being able to stand perfectly upright after a "faith healing."

If we want to fit it in our metaphysical paradigm, we can say it seems like the placebo effect could be much stronger when there's genuine belief in the process, and that psychosomatic issues can engender actualized physical symptoms when there's a meaningful expectation that an outcome is likely. But by looking at it systematically, maybe we're weakening these sort of effects?