Balinese Life
Promoting Wellness through Spiritual Health

Scented smokes of incense sticks overwhelm the entire holy chamber. While, the altar is also furnished with colourful paraphernalia like holy umbrellas. These are only some features of chamber belongs to balian or traditional healer of Bali. They make the ambience more ‘spiritual’. In the meantime, all guests are sitting quietly and worshipping solemnly. For the sake of recovery, they are willing to wait for remarks of the balian and further treatment for the patient for hours. A favourite balian here can, by and large, have abundant patients as that of a physician where queue is similarly applied.

The Hindus in Bali believe that individual state of well being is not merely determined by the absence of illness pertaining to physical condition, but also an improved quality of life resulting from enhanced mental and spiritual health.
The latter can further comprise the worship to God, relationship to ancestors and spatial layout of the house compound. Any disorder occurs among them will inflict a disorder or illness. For instance, a patient may be declared has no illness symptom based on check up by physician, as nothing goes wrong with him. However, the patient still suffers. But when being consulted to balian, it is said that there is disorder on his holy place. This can be caused by impurities or plant that impedes the path to the place. Having fixed to its original, the ‘illness’ gradually relieves. This does not necessarily means that physician cannot cure him, but the symptom occurs beyond the reach of medical science. It belongs to spiritual sphere.
For the Balinese, the example above is called ‘pemalinan’ or spiritually environmental disorder. Its symptom is customarily indicated by illness that comes intermittently. However, it usually does not need any medicine, except for holy water. What to do is that one should make apologize worship and fix such disorder. Realizing this fact, they will assuredly consult the physician first when bad things happen to their health and the balian as alternative or complement.
In determining the layout of house compound, the Balinese must pay attention to the balancing opposites orientation apart from the traditional geomancy (asta kosala kosali). Such orientation consists of two antagonistic poles from which divine and netherworldly energies can issue such as mountainward-seaward and east (sunrise)-west (sunset). By this orientation, family temples are usually located on direction of sunrise or the combination of both axes as sunrise and moutainward are considered to be the holy ones. However, in modern era as today, the authorized religious assembly has also ratified vertical orientation in which the holy place should be put onto the highest floor of multi-tiered building.
Before making use of the buildings (both holy place and residential house), an inauguration rite is performed to purify and impart a life to them. So, the building itself is then spiritually treated as a living thing as well. If human being consists of head, body and foot, the same also applies to such building. On the contrary, when thing goes wrong spiritually on the building will affect the human being. Accordingly, to make that all are in proper condition, their purity should be maintained at all times. One simple example that can be found in day-to-day life is that they never dry underwear washings higher than the head in the yard or put them carelessly inside, the more so that of women. Failing to comply with these may result in impurity and then inflict disorders on its dweller.
Another that is no less important is cuntaka. It is a condition of temporary impurity caused by family death, abortion, childbirth and woman’s period. Whoever encounters this condition is not allowed to enter the temple’s compound. In public temple, announcement board for this is usually set in front of the outermost courtyard. It is done for the sake of temple’s purity and safety to visitors and temple’s congregation. The Hindus themselves will perform no rituals in the temple or enter sanctums during this period before they carry out a purificatory rite as specified by the legislation of customary village.
To sum up, maintaining the balance among physical, mental and spiritual health will help to attain wellness. And spiritual health itself is, apart from worship to God and implementing religious teachings, embodied through observance towards spatial orientation, geomancy and precaution as mentioned above. (BTN/029)