PRACTICE OF NON-CONVENTIONAL MEDICINE IN RUSSIA AND BULGARIA AND ITS SCIENTIFIC STUDY

Abstract

The interview discusses issues of existence and functioning, institutionalization and integration of folk healing into the healthcare system of Russia (folk healers and spiritual healers), as well as specialists practicing other methods, often attributed to complementary medicine (homeopaths, apitherapists, aquatherapists, bioenergetics, etc.). The situation in Russia is compared to the one in Bulgaria. In Bulgaris, as well as in Russia (under the Health Protection Act of 1993), there is a profession of “practicing folk therapists and lechiteli of alternative treatment methods“, which includes both groups – practicing folk lechiteli (lechiteli, natural lechiteli and herbal lechiteli) and lechiteli of alternative treatment methods (bioenergo-therapists). The interviewers compare various problems with healing and other non-conventional methods of treatment in two countries. In particular, they raise the question of how Bulgarian healers managed to survive in the people’s democratic period, how the revival of healing and development of other nonconventional methods in the last three decades was happening. I. Yaneva-Balabanska talks about the legislative side of the issue and how the scientific studies of various groups of specialists, including psychics, have been conducted.