These Navajo diagnosticians practice techniques in common with healers of many other Native traditions. It is commonly practiced by interpreting dreams, waking visions, or omens seen in such apparently random events as a toss of coins, a pattern in flowing water, or the crackling of a fire. Medical divination has a world-wide distribution. It was practiced by the Chinese more than 3000 years ago. Sometimes the patient is asked to read the markings on a stone in a type of free association to help both the patient and the healer discover relevant information from the realm of Spirit -what we might call the unconscious, both personal and collective.
Spirits also supply diagnoses during the darkness of dream-time.
The healer holds a pebble in each fist and recites a prayer formula. In a similar way, a silver coin may be immersed in water and its movements interpreted. In another Cherokee divination, a freshly cut stick is partially immersed in a stream at daybreak. It must be emphasized, again, that the essence of Native American diagnostics is not the technique, but the ability of the healer to see the patient with the inner eye of spirit, to sense disturbances of energy with the hands and heart, and to commune with higher sources of knowledge. For this reason, the diagnostic procedures are ineffective if merely imitated and cannot be easily taught to those who do not participate in Native tradition.