Profiles of Healing

Book/Audio CD Series Releases
Balians: Traditional Healers of Bali

In a friendly, conversational tone, cultural anthropologist Bradford Keeney, Ph.D., recounts his harrowing first night in Bali when his thatched-roof hut was literally stomped on by a mystical creature. "None of my psychotherapist training could ease this nightmare," writes Keeney. "I knew I was not in a waking dream or hallucination. And I began to wonder if this stomping might be a way to guide us to research in a way I had not previously considered."

What follows are the first person stories of Balinese men and women healers, known as balians - their practices and initiations, training methods, beliefs, and a special art section: commissioned reproductions of the sacred Lontar, the balians' manual on ancient healing ways etched on dried palm leaves in the 11th century.

This book is a must for anyone interested in indigenous healing and a valuable resource for anthropology enthusiasts and adventurers. "During [one] ceremony," writes Keeney (described by Utne as "the Marco Polo of psychology"), " I felt someone kick me on the side of the head, but when I turned to see who it was, there was no one near me. The priests were very happy to hear this because the god initiates you into the balian's way of knowing by stepping on your head with his foot."

From Balians:
"Power comes from the tension between the evil and good. We call this power sakti. The power is in the difference between them. No one really has sakti. It is more accurate to say that a spiritual person is fighting for sakti rather than say that they have sakti. If there is no evil attacking you, there is no sakti in the situation. You never win a battle because the important fights keep going on. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. Our stories are about these cycles of winning and losing sakti."
-Ngurah Nala, M.D.

Lavishly illustrated, with an audio CD, Balians is the tenth book in the Profiles of Healing series, created to give readers a direct experience of sitting with healers, traditional shamans and medicine people, unfiltered through western analysis, explanations and theory.

Edited by Bradford Keeney, Ph.D.
Pub. Date: December 2003
ISBN 978-0-9666509-6-9 hardbound
ISBN 978-0-9666509-7-6 softcover
Audio CD, 240 pages
80 photos, 53 illus.
7X10 inches
$18.95 SC/$39.95 HC
anthropology/religion/complementary medicine
RINGING ROCKS PRESS

Contact: Sharon LaDriere at