ABSTRACT
Social media platform TikTok has become a virtual ballroom that proliferates popular dance styles and is heavy on idiosyncratic limbs, forward focus, and text-based pantomime. Across world cultures, shamans exist as trusted spiritual leaders who act as both physicians and lead dancers. Recent studies have shown them to be the first professional class given their abilities to perform rituals that address the whole person—body, mind, and spirit—while keeping the community balanced. Much like Steward’s recollection of the Quillacingas tribe’s moon dance ritual, TikTok’s popular dance structure may prove to be a force for global healing while simultaneously promoting trust in the profession. Dancing in someone else’s shoes can aid physicians in fostering mutual respect and removing artificial barriers of verbal and clinical power differentials to increase cultural humility. Through mastering choreographic meme-ography, physicians transform into trusted shamans who can eliminate taboos around female health while providing access to information for a new generation of patients.
