"Body and Emotion" is a study of the relationship between culture and emotional distress, an examination of the cultural forces that influence, make sense of, and heal severe pain and malaise. In order to investigate this relationship, Robert R. Desjarlais served as an apprentice healer among the Yolmo Sherpa, a Tibetan Buddhist people who reside in the Helambu region of north-central Nepal.

Robert Desjarlais teaches anthropology at Sarah Lawrence College and is the author of Shelter Blues: Sanity and Selfhood Among the Homeless, also published by Penn.