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Psycho-therapy in Kalimantan’s Hinterland

 

The balian is a healer, whose method of treatment is to try to penetrate a patient’s sub-consciousness, influencing the mind to expel his or her fear. The patient’s own inner power is transformed into a natural healer. The balian also endeavors to integrate the patient’s psyche into the cosmic order, to relieve disharmony, because disharmony is believed to be the source of all illness.

Smoke rises from burning incense, filling the room. Indu As, the balian, an Ot Danum Dayak woman, drops grains of rice into the smoke, as she narrates the sacred origin of rice. She begs the rice to help her, believing it will pass her plea on to the sangiang or ancestor-spirits for healing purpose. Indu As was treating the wife of Zailani, a resident of Tumbang Topus village, Sumber Barito Murung Raya sub-district in Central Kalimantan. The healer and the patient were in the middle of the room, while a number of villagers watched.

Marko Mahin, a theological anthropologist at the Theological College of the Kalimantan Evangelist church, explained that the grains of rice would metamorphose into seven beautiful women ready to seek a cure at all points of the compass. While six of them fanned out, the seventh stayed behind.

Indu As speaks a number of Dayak languages, such as Ot Danum, Ngaju, Punan, and Murung, and even coastal Malay, Banjarese, depending on which of the ancestor-spirits enters her body.

Ukas of Tumbang Topus village said that it was not that the healer spoke many languages: it was the possessing spirit that spoke. A spirit entered Indu As’s body. Her hands moved as if combing long hair—the spirit was believed to have been a grandmother who had long hair. Her hand took up a small piece of stone that had been readied and began her diagnosis. A dialogue in Ot Danum ensued.

Narai gawin ketu toh, the spirit asked. 'What are you doing?' Ike handak manantamba, a nearby villager replied, ‘we seek healing.’ Narai kahabae? Ie toh pehe usoke tuntang bahali nahaseng. ‘She has pain in the chest and breathing difficulty’. Laku gula bahandang esu. ‘Give me some brown sugar, grandchild,’ the grandmother-spirit demanded.

Using the brown sugar, the grandmother-spirit detected the illness which she removed with a comb. Each spirit has its own particular healing method. Some use combs, or a stone, or water, or tepung tawar (rise-flour mixed with water and leaves used in ritual purification), and even chicken’s blood.

Traditional healing

The ritual healer, balian, continues to be the main foundation for treating illness in Kalimantan’s hinterland to day. In fact, this is true for most of Kalimantan, although methods may differ from place to place. The Meratus Dayaks in South Kalimantan, for example, carry out their healing rites as part of thanksgiving rites, baaruh. In Central Kalimantan, the healing rites can be small-scale like the one carried out for Zailani’s wife, while the healer is a man. Healing rites in East Kalimantan, meanwhile, can be very grand and carry on for 20 days, culminating in the sacrificial slaughtering of cattle, and female healers are often to be seen.

Seclusion and isolation have forced the people of hinterland Kalimantan to maintain ancient healing methods. There is only the balian to depend upon no community health care units, for doctors are few and far between in the interior.

The balian is believed to be able to conduct relations with the spiritual world. Anthropologist Marko Mahin said that the healers viewed humans as an inseparable part of an established system and believed that all illness was a consequence of disharmony with cosmic order, the consequence of behavior in disharmony with nature. Thus, balian therapy stresses the maintenance of universal harmony in the context of human relationships as well as relations with the spiritual world.

In balian therapy, the patient as an individual is not so important. The social situation is the basis on which a diagnosis is made and is therefore given much more significance than physical or psychological factors. The search for causes and the expression of diagnosis as well as intensive communication with the patient of his/her relatives are much more prominent than with modern therapy.

Some cases of balian therapy appear to take the psychomatic approach, using psychological techniques for physical illnesses. The objective is to re-integrate the patient’s psyche into the cosmic order, to restore harmony. That is the essence of balian therapy, according to Marko.

Modern psychotherapy

Healing rites are aimed at raising sub-conscious contradictions and opposition to the conscious sphere. Where they can be resolved by the patient him/herself or by his/her family. A strong relationship between healer and patient transforms into a supernatural power that becomes the healing energy.

Marco Mahin said that balians have known these techniques for centuries, long before they were scientifically rediscovered by modern psychologist. There is, of course, a difference between modern psychotherapy and the balian’s ancient approach.

Modern psychotherapy, according to Fritjof Capra, helps patients by constructing an individual myth with elements derived from the patient’s own experiences, while balian therapy gives patients a social myth that is not limited to their individual experiences. The concept of balian healing works not in the patient’s sub-conscience but, more than that, in the collective social sub-conscience of the whole community.

The balian’s more holistic approach to the human body surpasses the mechanical approach of biomedical medication which takes only a partial view of the human body. Coincidentally, the balian’s zealous search for a cure can be instructive on the social dimension of an illness, which hitherto has been neglected and forgotten by many.

Traditional healers have been working in their communities for centuries, seeking such primitive cures. Equipped with traditional wisdom, they are convinced that illness is a consequence of human disorder that involves both body and mind, self-image, dependence on the physical and social environment, and the relationship between humans and the cosmos.

The wealth of psychological techniques used by balian’s to integrate the patient’s physical problems into a wider concept mirrors current psychosomatic therapies. Western medicine, which views the human body as a machine that can be analyzed according to its smallest parts, does not have such an approach. Modern medical science is described by Fritjof Capra as often forgetting that the patient is a human being and reducing health to a mechanical function. Medical science does not scientificate the healing phenomenon.

The balian’s psychotherapy is shrouded by mystery, but it has cured many patients. Therefore, when modern healing reaches the hinterland, it must not mean the abandonment of traditional healing methods.

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