Healing Winds

Talk about getting your second wind...

"O gentle breeze, ease our pain... Healing Wind!"

— Mint, Tales of the Abyss

Although wind superpowers can easily be used for offense, healing powers persistently show up as a subset of this arsenal. Healing spells that call on the wind are common, and the healer (who is usually a White Mage or a White Magician Girl) can be wind-aligned. This is convenient from a logistics standpoint — because wind is usually long-range, this gives The Medic the ability to heal damage from afar, or treat multiple people at once. Because air and wind are everywhere, however, these magicks are usually practical, but not very powerful, and may pale in comparison to other healing elements like light or water.

This trope's roots are simple: winds are tied to life, both metaphorically and scientifically (because the oxygen in the air around us is necessary for respiration^note although too much oxygen is also bad for your respiratory system. Science!). Breathing in particular is an easy indicator of whether someone is alive or not. Also, there's nothing as calming and soothing as clean air and a fresh breeze, and access to clean air has been proven time and time again to be better for one's health. See Healthy Country Air for more on this idea. Aromatherapy, or soothing scents, can also tie into this.

Subtrope of Blow You Away; contrast its more attack-oriented subtropes like Razor Wind, Wind from Beneath My Wings, and Breath Weapon. Compare Heal It with Water for another element associated with health and life. See also Kiss of Life, another way to interpret "breath of life", and Winds Are Ghosts, for when the wind is associated with souls.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Fairy Tail
  • Wendy Marvell has wind-based Dragon Slayer magic, and specifically has an ability where she manipulates clean air to heal someone's injuries, cure status conditions, or restore stamina. Polluted air hampers this. She's used it to cure Erza of poisoning.
  • Wendy's opponent-turned-friend Sherria has similar wind-based God Slayer Magic, which also comes with a healing spell. Sherria notably has the ability to self-heal, which Wendy lacks, but in exchange she can't restore stamina.
• The Angel's Breath card is an important plot point during the Greed Island arc of Hunter × Hunter. It manifests as a beautiful woman whose blows a wind that can heal any injury.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind: Giorno's stand, Gold Experience, is used to heal people of missing body parts countless times throughout the part. Its dub name? Golden Wind.
• Lyrical Nanoha: "Healing Wind" is literally the name of Shamal's ultimate healing spell in the movie continuity. When Shamal casts it, a small cyclone appears around her that rapidly heals wounds and fatigue of all allies in the area, as well as fixing up their protective spells. Shamal has a lot of other wind- and healing-based spells, to the point that one of her titles is roughly translated as "Healing Hand of the Wind".
• Fuu of Magic Knight Rayearth is the Magic Knight of Wind and is the only main character to learn a healing spell, appropriately called "Winds of Healing".
• Luna in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds has the "Healing Wind" card in her deck; when played, it restores life points.

Comic Books

• Gold Digger has a Ki healing skill called "Renewing Breath". It is exactly what it says on the tin — the user focuses his ki on healing while hyperventilating and then a breath that heals them back to top form. Julia Diggers accidentally manages to de-age her body back to its prime (mid-twenties) when she first uses it. Later on it is revealed that the Renewing Breath can be used to revive someone who is recently deceased at a great cost to the people applying it.

Film

• The Cassandra Crossing is partially about a top-secret American bio-weapon. It can't be that good, though, if it can easily be healed with oxygen within an hour or two.

Literature

• In The Adventures Of Petrushka by Margarita Fadeyeva and Anatoly Smirnov, the Pine-Tree Air, Clean and Healthy (it's all his name), is an elemental creature in the form of a (usually) softly blowing wind who helps the main characters when they are in the swamp kingdom of diseases.

Live-Action TV

• Legend of the Seeker's "Breath of Life" manifests as a small white mist from the mouth of the caster that can revive someone who is Not Quite Dead.

Theatre

• In Kashchey the Deathless, the Storm-Bogatyr is an Elemental Embodiment of a cold strong wind, and his gusts cure the effects of the Love Potion (which doubles as a sleeping potion) given to Prince Ivan by Kashcheyevna.

Video Games

• Nina, the White Magician Girl of Breath of Fire IV, uses wind magic both offensively and for healing.
• In Chrono Cross, wind is governed by the Green element, which includes several powerful healing spells.
• Dungeon Siege: Healing Wind is a spell of nature magic that creates a breeze that raises the health of the entire party.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy IV: The After Years: The Ninjutsu and White Magic abilities can be combined to form a Healing Wind ability.
  • Final Fantasy VII: Aerith's first Limit Break is called Healing Wind; it restores the party members' HP by half of their maximums.
  • In addition to the above, spells called Healing Wind or similar have appeared in Final Fantasy IX and Final Fantasy XIV.
  • The White Wind ability is a monster-exclusive skill that heals the target for an amount equal to the user's current HP. It can also be used by the heroes should the monster be mind controlled into using it on a Blue Mage.
• Golden Sun:
  • The Jupiter (wind) djinni Breath is one of the first ones found in both The Lost Age and Dark Dawn, who heals 40% of a character's HP, making the early game easier to survive. Note that this association is absent in Japanese, where its name is Rescue because the healing always occurs at the start of the party's turn.
  • Golden Sun: Dark Dawn: In addition to the aforementioned Breath, Karis (a wind/electricity user) now has a minor healing spell line called Fresh Breeze, which is the weakest in the game but heals everybody and doesn't require Djinn to use.
• In League of Legends, Janna, the Storm's Fury, has an ultimate ability called "Monsoon", where she unleashes a powerful wind current around her that pushes away surrounding enemies and rapidly heals herself and her nearby allies. This mechanic is sort of a blunt and very literal depiction of what she represents in lore — Janna is a benevolent wind elemental revered in Zaun, a city so devastated by pollution that even their clouds are effectively toxic gas. With Janna's presence, she brings with her fresh air, longevity, safety, and overall, life.
• Sharla from MARDEK. She's an Aeromancer who can restore HP, raise defense, and nullify Air-related damage.
• Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance puts a dark twist on this trope. The Quirky Miniboss Squad have a wind theme, and are all named for different types of wind around the world. They're all deeply broken individuals with their own motivations for joining their mercenary company, which serves as a less than perfect coping mechanism for their traumas.
• Persona
  • In Persona 4, Yosuke's unique skill is Youthful Wind, a skill that moderately heals the party as well as buffing accuracy and evasion.
  • In Persona 3, Persona 4, and Persona 5, the skill Cool Breeze is a passive effect that recovers a small amount of HP and SP after every battle (the English version of the game changes the name to "Life Aid").
• The Pokémon Grass-type move "Aromatherapy", where the user releases a soothing scent that cures all status effects.
• Rakenzarn Frontier Story: The Healer shared class comes with a light wind spell.
• Rakenzarn Tales: Nina is the first party member meant specifically for healing and is a Wind element character. Her first weapon has Wind spells built into it.
• Sword and Fairy 7: Chengfeng is a spirit of Wind, that has healing powers. One of spells that summons her is even named "Healing Wind". The only time when she uses her powers to attack is during her master's Limit Break.
• The Tales Series has this as a recurring ability that has shown up in Tales of Symphonia, Tales of the Abyss, and Tales of Graces. Generally, the user summons gusts of wind that heal allies in a given area. The Fairy Circle spell as it appears in Abyss takes it a step further by dealing wind damage to anything in the given area after it finishes healing the caster's allies.
  • Hisui from Tales of Hearts primarily uses Wind magic and is your best healer.
• In Temtem, wind-type attacks are strong against toxic Temtem, presumably because of this trope.
• Trails Series from the Crosbell arc onwards has Breath/Holy Breath arts. They are weaker than Water-elemental Tear spell series, but can affect several allies.
• A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky: The Aura skill:
  A gentle breeze heals allies and cures status effects.
• In Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Haze's element is wind, and her specialty in combat is healing.

Webcomics

• Homestuck: A variation. John's wind-themed powers don't heal people, but he has used them on several occasions to metaphorically heal planets or the universe. One of his character songs is even entitled "Doctor".
  • John uses his wind powers to remove a bomb called "The Tumor" from the heart of the planet/cosmic being Skaia.
  • In John's planet quest, he uses his wind to remove the oil that has been poisoning and choking his planet, returning it to life.
  • In Act 6 John uses his wind powers to remove JPEG artifacts that have been corrupting the nature of reality and symbolically causing death and tragedy.

Real Life

• The French expression "un vent à décorner les boeufs" ("a wind to take the horns off the cows"), meaning "a very strong wind", is believed to have come from farmers choosing windy days to cut their cattle's horns, as the wind would help flies away from the wound and accelerate the formation of scar tissue.

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