Tickets and Tours for Indonesia Experiences

Traditional healing on Bali is not a spa treatment. It is a religious practice with its own vocabulary. The healer is a balian, and the role is inherited, revealed in a dream, or arrived at through study of the lontar. Those are palm-leaf manuscripts covering anatomy, herbs and ritual.

Balians work in several distinct ways.

• Balian usada. From the texts.
• Balian tulang. Setting bones.
• Balian taksu. Channelling.
• Balian apun. Through massage.

A session typically begins with diagnosis by touch or by trance. Then comes some combination of massage, herbal preparation, prayer and offerings. The point is spiritual balance, not symptom relief. Balinese families use balians alongside doctors, not instead of them.

What visitors book is usually one of two things.

• A session with a balian. Arranged through a guide who can interpret and who knows which healers accept outsiders. A genuine one will not advertise.
• Melukat. The water purification ceremony, most often at Tirta Empul near Tampaksiring, where you queue at a row of spouts in a sarong and are cleansed one by one.

Balinese families perform melukat every day. Visitors are welcome if they follow the rules. Some sessions are held at smaller temples with fewer people, which is worth asking for.

Practical

• Dress. This is a live religious practice, so shoulders and knees are covered. A sarong and sash are worn, and usually provided.
• Photography. Ask rather than assume.
• Temple water. Menstruating women are asked not to enter it.
• Payment. There is no fixed price for a balian. A donation in an envelope is the form, and a guide will advise on the amount.
• What a session is like. Physically robust — deep pressure, pressure points, sometimes tears. It is not a massage.
• Tirta Empul. Busiest in the middle of the day, quietest just after opening.
• What to bring. A change of clothes and a towel for the purification.