Healing: How effective is it? | Fandom

UnchainedDragon25·6/11/2025 in General

Healing: How effective is it?

I was just thinking about the painful recovery period I went through last summer following a major surgery and thought "How effective is healing in the art of waterbending?" We've seen it used to treat internal injuries such as the burns and neuromuscular damage from improperly executed lightning redirection, surface level burns from firebending, and even used in a manner similar to TMS therapy to deal with psychological trauma.

But we also know that it has its limits.

Katara couldn't save Jet after Long Feng effectively caused him to die of what I can only imagine to be internal bleeding via a rock to the chest at vehicular collision speeds and possible organ penetration if his sternum fragmented and punctured his vital organs. Katara was already a master healer in her own right and she still couldn't stop major internal injuries.

We do know that healing used with spirit water from the spirit oasis at the North Pole has special properties and allowed Katara to resurrect Aang after Azula killed him with lightning, albeit with Aang having to spend the better part of the next month in a coma reestablishing his connection to the Avatar Spirit. But it can bring back the very recently deceased. I assume it had to have been less than seven minutes since it takes roughly that long for the brain to die of cerebral hypoxia.

But what are your thoughts? What do you think are the upper limits of what healing via waterbending can achieve with and/or without spirit oasis water?

Waterbending Healing

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Bastion2.0·6/12/2025

My theory on how healing works is it enhances the chi in a certain area of the body to accelerate natural recovery and make it more efficient.

Katara perfectly heals her hands which look to have first degree burns witihn just a few seconds and does the same for aang.

But we see with other "burn" wounds like hakoda or Zuko's she can make it better but not heal it entirely. both hakoda and zuko still needed help to move and felt pain. For toph she was unable to heal them entirely, saying she wished she had worked on them sooner, so it seems time also plays a role, but we can assume her feet were fine by the next episode which is about a day or two.

For jet's case he got hit in the chest so he probably had his ribs chattered and internal organs (multiple possibly) ruptured. and it was an internal injury, not a wound or burn like the previous ones I stated above.

But we also know that some things just cannot heal. she works on aang's wound with spirit water the first time and normally the second (likely more times) but it never heals and he even has it in imbalance, the latest we see his scar. so perhaps deep and longer lasting wounds that have already "healed" might be unable to heal entirely.

There's more. we also see katara can heal the effects of mental damage but I can't understand that one considering its also internal and neurological.

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In tlok we see that katara has started using entire submersion. she can keep someone's body alive seen as when she did with jinora. Kya could heal bumi's head injury through proximity rather than contact. Korra could completely heal bolin's arm which was bruised to where he couldn't use it anymore.

We do know that healing cannot heal things like nerve damage but it might be able to help the process like I stated above. katara tries to heal korra's paralysis for months and things only progress when korra herself pushes to improve.

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Now spirit water seems to take this to a new level. it probably just increases the potency of healing tenfold. it brought aang back from clinical death, healed wan instantly and mako korra and bolin just as fast. (anything in the novels about spirit water I don't know about, I gotta get back on reading)

What do you think?