Born in 1932 in Yashkul’, Nimya is a Torghut man of the Ik Tsookhr clan. He is a bone-setter and receives patients daily who are usually local people, although some come from as far away as Astrakhan’. He does not cure internal illnesses nor uses medicinal herbs. His expertise is setting dislocated bones and curing headaches and head injuries by massaging. Nimya uses goat’s butter to soften his hands before massage. Another method of curing headaches is to hold a freshly cooked, hot sheep’s head over the head of a patient. If the patient does not have a serious head injury, this method is quite effective. During treatment Nimya also reads prayers in Kalmyk, rings a bell and turns a small prayer wheel in order to calm down his patients. After treatment, the injured joints have to be bandaged with a cloth soaked in salt water. Nimya is a religious man himself. He goes to a Buddhist temple. His uncle was also a monk and a famous bone-setter. It is he who taught Nimya how to cure and massage people. According to Nimya, healing skills can be inherited only through the patrilineal line. One of Nimya’s grandsons is a bone-setter and has a medical degree. Nimya began to cure people in the Soviet period on the advice of a monk who said to him, ‘You are ill, you must cure people. Otherwise you will continue being ill’. Before healing people, Nimya suffered from poor health, nightmares, head aches and had problems with his kidneys. All these stopped when he became a healer himself.