By Ida Hammerich Nielson
ihn@adm.au.dk
It’s early morning on the East African island of Mauritius, and the local people are in party mood as they head towards the temple to celebrate the Hindu festival of Thaipoosam. The bravest of them will have sharp skewers pushed through their cheeks. Hooks will be inserted into their skin and they will wear sandals with nails in – with the pointed end upwards!
A team of researchers from Århus stands on the sidelines watching this dramatic ritual – they are investigating the relationship between what pain feels like and religious conviction. Because the interesting thing about Thaipoosam is that the pierced participants do not feel great pain during the ritual – some of them even pull heavy carts attached to hooks in their backs, explains PhD scholar Else-Marie Jegindø, who has just returned from three months’ fieldwork on Mauritius.
“The participants make careful preparations for the ritual through fasting and prayer. And they expect that if they prepare themselves well enough they will not feel much pain. People who do not expect much pain do not feel much pain,” she says, adding that:
“This matches the results achieved in clinical pain research: the context in which we experience pain has a great influence on what pain feels like.”
Pain purifies
One of the hypotheses of the researchers was that people are capable of standing and handling great physical pain if they expect the pain to lead to psychological benefits. And that is what happens in Thaipoosam – the participants expect the ritual to relieve them of bad karma.
“The participants believe that the ritual has a purifying effect – it simply makes them better people. In many cases they also expect the ritual to answer quite specific prayers and wishes – help to pass an exam, for instance,” says Else-Marie Jegindø.
