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My housemate was watching a show on Netflix called Medicine Men Go Wild when I happened into the room for Season 1 Episode 2: World of Pain. The episode involves the two brothers (apparently doctors) traveling around Asia interacting with people who are undergoing immense amounts of pain (by Western standards), such as broken ribs, an infected and removed fingernail, Thaipusam, and Indian flesh suspensions! Obviously, the latter two were of interest to me. The doctors are quite down to Earth dudes who really become involved in their research, going so far as to receive cheek skewers at Thaipusam and one of them takes a hook in his back from some “rationalists” in Bangalore. The rationalists evidently travel around and perform what we’d call ball dances and vertical back suspensions while not entranced or meditating, in order to show others that there is nothing mystical about these acts of pain.

I couldn’t find the suspensions anywhere online to link to but I did find a short clip of one of the brothers receiving the hook in his back.

Note that I “get” what the rationalists’ message is, but I can’t help but feel that there is something more to suspensions than just the physical, but that’s more of a face to face conversation.

ihung suspended a great friend of ours over the weekend and Jared was nice enough to share this fantastic video footage he shot from the experience.

Update: Allen posted this video on Tumblr and wondered when it was actually shot, so I did some more googling and found that this video isn’t actually from the 70’s, instead it’s most likely from 1985, or so this article makes it seem.

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Doing some youtube searching, as I’m wont to do on occasion and I came across an older video of human suspensions being performed in Sri Lanka. A Professor Carlo Fonseka takes the opportunity to show that suspension does not take magic or religious devotion to achieve and goes on to show a (presumed) scientist being suspended from six hooks in a superman position. This video is most likely from the late 1970’s as that is when the professor was waging a war of science vs gods, and his main opponent was the Hindu deity Kataragama, whose devotees are known for firewalking and flesh suspensions. Kataragama is also known as Lord Murugan to the Tamil people of India, which is the same deity exalted during Thaipusam.

Despite knowing that religious devotion is not necessary for rituals such as suspension, I still personally find it much more interesting within that context. We in the modern suspension community know that it’s mind over matter, not religious devotion which allows us to suspend, but I personally hope that all of us remember where these rituals originate.