Co-Healing: An Institutional Reform for Caring With

Co-Healing reimagines how communities can enact modes of care to prevent and treat multiple illnesses by positioning the microbial body – the microorganisms that live with, on and in us – as the primary locus of care and people as co-producers of sensorial medicine. It seeks to reform the paternalistic, depersonalised format of modern Westernised medicine with a collectivised and embodied practice of health. By enacting rituals of microbial grooming, a co-healer acts as both caregiver and care receiver. Articulated around tools for exchanging microbial bodies, the rituals facilitate a medical experience that is social and sensorial, enabling the safe sharing of the microbiota from the skin, lungs, mouth and vagina.