Balinese Spiritual Healing

Balian and the Bali Hindu setting

Balian is the Balinese word for traditional healers. A 2025 visual ethnography of collaboration between mental health workers and healers in Indonesia notes that healers in Balinese Hinduism are referred to by this term. A 2024 qualitative study describes Balinese ideas of health through Tri Hita Karana, a concept of balance among people, nature and the divine (Sang Hyang Widhi), and says balian are regarded as custodians of spiritual knowledge. These are accounts of belief reported by informants and local authors, and they are not measured findings.

Lontar and usada manuscripts

Lontar are palm-leaf manuscripts on which words are engraved in Balinese script. Andrea Acri, writing in Inside Indonesia in 2015, says the technique originates in pre-modern India and that Bali's collections include treatises on medicine alongside literature, historical chronicles and scriptures. He reports that lontar were historically kept by Brahmanical or aristocratic elites, religious and ritual specialists, balian and cultured commoners, and that large collections are held at Udayana University, the Dwijendra Foundation and the Bali Museum in Denpasar.

A 2023 ethnobotanical paper describes Lontar Usada Bali as the body of traditional medical knowledge recorded on palm leaves. Its authors estimate that it originated from medical knowledge in India and developed alongside Hinduism on the island, and they cite an earlier study estimating about 55,000 lontar held by Balinese families, priests, balian and institutions. They add that much of the content is known mainly by balian. The sources opened give no firm date for the first usada texts, so this page does not date them.

Psychiatric and anthropological accounts

Late twentieth-century papers by Balinese psychiatrist Luh Ketut Suryani and colleagues treat balian as part of everyday clinical reality. A 1992 paper reports that psychiatrists and traditional healers in Bali are often involved with the same patients and that Western psychiatric concepts coexist with the healers' beliefs and methods. A 2000 study of balian found that an initiatory illness or madness was reported by a minority of healers, more often by women who used trance possession, and argued that it can be distinguished from mental illness in Balinese understanding.

Balian and the types described

The sources opened do not use one fixed classification of balian. A 2024 qualitative study in a tourism and language journal lists balian ketakson (divination and treatment of illness attributed to spiritual disturbance), balian kepicak (talismans and herbal potions), balian usada (herbal and manuscript-based knowledge), balian campuran (traditional methods combined with modern medicine) and a holistic type working with ritual and meditation. These labels come from one paper and spellings and categories vary across the literature. The popular term balian taksu was not found in the scholarly sources opened for this page.

Taksu, usada and related terms

A 2024 study of Hindu residents of Denpasar describes taksu as the peak energy or spiritual power needed in religious and artistic life, with religious, devotional, aesthetic, temporal and professional dimensions. That study, as summarized for this page, does not discuss balian, so a link between taksu and healers rests on other writing that was not opened here.

Usada refers to traditional medical knowledge, much of it recorded in lontar. Loloh are herbal drinks that a 2015 ethnobotanical study describes as produced and consumed only in Bali. Boreh is a mashed mixture of plant ingredients mixed with a liquid such as water, vinegar or wine and applied to the body, and tampel is a similar mixture attached to a body part, according to a 2023 paper. Niskala, as translated in one interview, means unseen, and is used for causes of illness believed to lie outside the visible world.

Herbal preparations

In a 2023 interview study of balian in Buleleng Regency on the north coast, researchers recorded medicinal plants named by nine healers in six villages in August and September 2022. The abstract reports 65 species in 37 families, while the results text says 66. Ginger-family plants were most common, leaves were the plant part used most often (about 35%), and external application (54%) was slightly more common than drinking a preparation (45%). The plants came mostly from home gardens (70%), with the rest gathered wild (19%) or bought at a market (11%).

A separate study documented 51 plant species in 32 families used in loloh, using interviews and questionnaires. Informants described loloh as taken to prevent and treat ailments such as heartburn, fever, diarrhea, hypertension and canker sores, mainly as decoctions or juices.

Ritual and spiritual elements

The Buleleng paper reports that some preparations were accompanied by a prayer to Hyang Widhi using banten offerings or by a spoken mantra, and the 2024 study describes healing sites such as temples, holy water sources and beaches. It also describes melukat, a ritual bathing at holy water sources meant for spiritual purification. An informant in a 2026 Ubud study likewise listed purification by water in holy temples and herbal healing among Balinese ideas of wellness. This page describes these elements only in outline and does not set out ritual procedures.

Care alongside biomedicine

The 2024 study says a sick person in Bali commonly alternates between a doctor and a balian. The 2025 visual ethnography observed collaboration in Denpasar between a psychiatrist and a Hindu healer, who was also a scholar and artist, and describes the aim as harmonizing the visible and invisible rather than converting spiritual ideas into biomedical terms. Collaboration there arose through personal relationships, not formal institutional programs.

Conditions healers report treating

In the Buleleng study, healers named convulsions, itching, cramps, headache, black magic (described by the authors as a mental disorder), stroke, herpes, tumor or cancer, diabetes, nephropathy and toothache among conditions they treat, each with a described formula. The paper reports these as informants' accounts, including statements that a condition usually resolves after a few uses. The study did not test the formulas, check outcomes or confirm diagnoses.

Illness explained by imbalance and unseen causes

The 2024 study reports that Balinese people attribute illness to imbalance among God, the universe and the person, and that for mental illness the non-physical cause is weighed heavily, so a balian is often the first option. One Sanur patient quoted there attributed a mental disorder to an unseen cause, felt shame about attending a hospital and said they would still consult a doctor if there was no improvement. A 2022 conference abstract reports a community leader saying that if a person sees a traditional healer and improves, families may feel hospital care is unnecessary.

Use of traditional remedies in Ubud

A 2025 questionnaire survey of 425 residents of the Ubud community found that Balinese traditional remedies (56.9%) and massage (33.6%) were the complementary practices used most often for self-care, and 95.3% of respondents reported religious prayer monthly. The sample was purposive and non-probability, so the figures describe the people surveyed and not Bali as a whole.

No controlled studies found

No randomized trials, controlled studies or systematic reviews of balian care were found. PubMed searches run on 2026-10-06 combined Bali, Balinese, balian, usada, traditional healer, traditional medicine, healing and ethnobotany, and returned ethnographic, ethnobotanical, survey and case-study papers. A search of the Consensus index was attempted but reached its monthly quota, so coverage of other databases is incomplete. The research reviewed describes what balian do and say, not whether their methods change health outcomes.

What the descriptive studies show

Ethnobotanical work documents plants and preparation methods. The authors of the loloh study note that the most frequently cited plants have reported pharmacological activities, such as antimicrobial or antidiabetic effects, in the wider literature. Those observations come from laboratory and other studies of the plants, not from tests of balian preparations, doses or treated patients, and they do not show that a loloh or boreh has any effect in people.

The 2000 study of balian examined healer biographies and methods, and not treatment outcomes. Its authors argue that Western ideas of shamanic initiation as illness gave a misleading picture of Balinese healers, since the initiatory suffering was reported by a minority and was distinguishable from psychosis in local understanding.

Research on collaboration with mental health services

The 2025 visual ethnography observed eight established partnerships in Java, Bali and Flores and interviewed 20 mental health professionals, 12 healers, 28 people receiving care and 16 caregivers. It reports facilitating factors (openness, shared values, negotiation of care) and barriers (competition and prejudice, limited resources, family resistance). It selected successful partnerships, ran over a short period and measured no clinical outcomes, so it does not show that collaboration improves health.

Ubud and the Eat Pray Love era

A 2026 ethnographic study in Ubud combined participant observation with interviews of 10 informants, among them homestay owners, a yoga instructor and tourism researchers. Most informants said wellness tourism benefited foreign operators more than local residents, citing foreign domination, economic leakage and isolated enclaves, and some said the film Eat Pray Love had changed the town. One informant said the film's medicine-man image had been overly commercialized, that healers who once counseled locals free now charge tourists high fees, and that some are not Balinese. These are the opinions of a small sample and were not independently verified.

Authenticity and cultural change

The 2024 study identifies melukat and shamanic practices as tourism attractions and notes pressure to keep cultural authenticity while meeting tourist demand, with ethical questions about how the practices are promoted. The 2023 ethnobotanical paper adds that Balinese communities face cultural erosion linked to long contact with foreign cultures and ecotourism, which it connects to declining knowledge of medicinal plants. The Ubud study concludes that wellness products are largely disconnected from indigenous spiritual practice.

Delayed or replaced medical care

Sources describe reliance on healers as a route that can postpone biomedical care. A 2022 abstract quotes a Balinese community leader on families who stop seeking hospital care once a person appears to improve, and the 2024 study cites stigma around psychiatric hospitals. In the 2025 ethnography, psychiatrists worried that patients who stop medication for religious treatment may relapse. It also reports that physical restraint and confinement of people with mental illness remains used in Indonesia, by families and communities and by some healers and health workers, and can cause long-lasting physical and psychological harm. These sources do not quantify delay or harm in Bali.

Herbal preparations and product quality

None of the sources opened reports adverse events, drug interactions or toxicity testing for preparations used by balian, and this absence does not show that they are free of harm. One 2019 cross-sectional study of 30 home producers of a commercial Balinese herbal drink, loloh cemcem, in a tourism area found E. coli in 43.3% of drink samples and enterotoxigenic E. coli in the water source, with poor handler hygiene associated with contamination. That study concerned a market beverage, not healer-made preparations, and it is relevant only as an example of quality concerns.

Several conditions in the healers' lists, such as stroke, convulsions, cancer and diabetes, are ones for which medical assessment is conventional, and the sources reviewed did not examine outcomes for them. Herbal preparations and ritual care should not delay or replace necessary medical care.

Training, standards and choosing a healer

The Buleleng paper says healers' knowledge passes by oral teaching and through lontar, and its informants had varied formal education. No source opened describes a professional register, code of ethics or training standard for balian, so none is stated here, and law was not reviewed. The 2024 study recommends additional training for balian in modern medical knowledge and collaboration with doctors, which is the authors' recommendation. In the Ubud study, an informant said Western tourists often cannot tell Balinese healers from people dressing as healers.