Katz's fieldwork, along with later work by ethnomusicologists and medical anthropologists studying San healing practice, situated num and the Ju'hoansi healing dance within a broader anthropological interest in trance and altered states of consciousness across hunter-gatherer societies, drawing comparisons, not always careful ones, to shamanic practices documented elsewhere in the world. Num has occasionally been discussed alongside other vital-force concepts such as mana, orenda and qi in general surveys of comparative religion, a comparison that can usefully highlight a shared human interest in embodied, cultivable healing power but risks obscuring how specifically the Ju'hoansi dance, its songs, its social structure and its physically demanding technique for raising num, differs from unrelated traditions grouped with it under a single broad label.
The Ju'hoansi healing dance and the concept of num remain living practice, documented respectfully and at length by researchers working directly with San communities, and this entry follows that documentation rather than the older, thinner colonial-era ethnography that first brought San religious life to outside attention. As with the other living traditions in this set, num is described here in the terms Ju'hoansi practitioners and their ethnographers use, not measured against a scientific standard external to the tradition.