Traditional healers push for recognition and licensing of age-old Himalayan practice

In the isolated kingdom of Lo Manthang , tucked away in Nepal’s Himalayas, ancient structures stand tall on arid lands that only allowed tourists in from the late 1990s. Amid a small settlement of Loba Buddhists whose children have now migrated out, 65-year-old Gyatso Bista is trying to preserve the ancient Tibetan medicinal system of Sowa Rigpa , also known as the science of healing.

This traditional knowledge and practice, relying on both scholarly and religious texts, has been used in highland Asian communities for more than 2,500 years. Throughout the millennia, healers gathered, observed and tested a vast array of local endemic species, varieties of plants, fungi and lichens and dozens of minerals, working them into formulas with the hope, and satisfaction, that they could treat certain physical and mental illnesses.