Table 1 Interview guideline

1. Please tell me, how did you come to be a healer? Remember back: What was it like, what happened? Please describe your healing activities? Do you follow other professions besides healing? Are there healers in your family?

1. Please describe what you have experienced during the healing treatment? What did you feel like? What was your inner experience? Do you experience changes of perception in comparison to everyday consciousness? What is your experience of time?

2. Can anyone become a healer or do you need a specific gift?

2. Did you prepare yourself for the healing treatment?

3. How do people find you?

3. Where did the treatment take place? Who participates in it?

4. What do you think makes a good healer? Do you consider yourself to be a good? healer?

4. Why did you consult a healer?

5. How would you define/frame the following: disease, health and cure?

5. What did you expect from the healing treatment? Did you expect changes in your life?

6. Who visits you, how and why?

6. Can you do something yourself to help the healing process? If so, what? What role does your social surrounding play?

7. Please tell me how a healing treatment takes place? What happens? Maybe you can give me an example of a recent treatment? Do you prepare yourself for a healing treatment? Where does the healing take place? Who participates in it? Do you work together with other healers?

7. How are you, since you began the healing treatment? What exactly has changed? When did the change begin?

8. Do you work with representatives of other medical disciplines? What about conventional doctors?

8. Since you started the healing treatment, do you experience your complaints or disease differently? How do you explain this change?

9. How do you experience a healing treatment yourself? What do you feel? What was your inner experience? Do you experience changes of perception in comparison to everyday consciousness? What is your experience of time?

9. Who or what does the healing?

10. How can you tell that healing occurs? When does the healing start, when does it end?

10. If such a treatment is not curative, what else is it?

11. Who or what creates the healing?

11. How did you come to visit this healer? How did you find him? Have you been to other healers before?

12. Do you find reasons for the illnesses of your clients? If yes, at what time of the treatment? Do you communicate these reasons to your clients?

12. When was the first time you visited a healer? Remember back: What was it like, what happened? Tell me something about your life and disease history.

13. If such a treatment is not curative, what is it?

13. What do you think makes a good healer?

14. What is the follow up treatment like? What can the client do to support healing?

14. What is your definition of disease, health and cure?

15. What can you achieve through your healing treatment? What is the client’s task/role in this?

15. Would you like to add something? Have we forgotten something important?

16. In the future we have plans for studies which investigate the effect of the healing treatments . How could you most likely assess or measure the effect of a healing treatment in your opinion?

17. Would you like to add something? Have we forgotten something important?