I recently traveled to Bali, Indonesia, which currently is a sought out destination, but it is the religion and culture that most intrigued me about coming to this beautiful island.
About 60 percent of the country of Indonesia is Hindu, a lot of Muslim and a little Buddhist. I had the wonderful opportunity to partake in a traditional Bali Healing Ritual with a healer in Bali and it was a exceptional experience to cleanse the spirit and to learn more about the Hindu religion.
A strong Hindu belief is that water is cleansing, for this reason, I was completely drenched in holy water and flowers by the end of this experience.
Before the healing experience, we met with the Balinese healer, her name was Desak, to do a palm reading, she sensed our emotions of our past and what we needed to do moving forward in our current life.
After this, we walked to an extended deck over a river, where I sat criss-crossed across a bunch of flowers. Desak poured holy water and flowers over me, to wash away negative energies and let them drop down to the river and flow all the way to the ocean to cleanse my spirit. This ceremony is called a melukat ceremony.
During the holy water being poured, she was saying ancient Hindu mantras in a deep voice, like you would when you meditate and say you’re “OM’s.” These mantras were based around cleansing the spirit, banishing negative energies and for protection.
As soon as the water started to hit me, emotions came to me that I couldn’t even explain. I started to cry and I wasn’t even really sure why, but the healer wanted me to let them out, to yell, to cry, to weep, to express myself and let go of these emotions, to rid them with the water all the way to the ocean.
She hugged me and knew exactly how to help me let my emotions go, she knew exactly what to say, even though I did not tell her why I had these emotions.
She guided my breathing in a way to let energy flow, bad energy out, good energies in.
Something stuck with me this day, she said, “never keep this in again.” It’s strange that even if you don’t have a dramatic experience during the time of this ritual, it brings out feelings you didn’t know you even had, but it may only be because you never truly let it go, just buried it.
After the cleansing was done, it was time to bring the power. Desak then poured more holy water and flowers on me, and each time she did, she blessed me with the power of wisdom, the power of knowledge, the power of love and the power of harmony.
With holy water, she blessed my hands and my knees, she blessed my feet, for everywhere I walk, the Universe supports me.
This experience was like no other, at one point my whole body was tingling and I almost felt like I was going to pass out, it’s something that I cannot explain.
By the end of this healing session, I was sitting criss-cross for probably over twenty minutes without really feeling it, it took about five more minutes of help to start walking again.
After this, they handed us our offerings for our blessings.
Everywhere in Bali, you’ll see offerings, in front of doorsteps, on the streets, on the counters, literally everywhere! There will be rice, incense, fruit, flowers and a number of other things.
This is an offering to the God’s and is put there every morning for people to pray to the God’s and The Universe. We were able to have our own offerings specific to cleansing.
The purpose of a Bali blessing is to bring more harmony between yourself and the universe, balance the chakras, release karma from past lives that might still plague you, and encourage prime health, happiness, safety, finances and a bright future.
We did this by following Desak’s prayers to the God’s, drinking holy water three times, blessing our offerings with holy water, placing rice on our third eye’s and our throat chakras.
We ended the ritual by Desak putting a small bracelet of black, red and white around our wrists to represent connection to the God’s, connection to nature and connection to the Universe.
Afterwards we ate our foods of our blessing together and were able to share them with people we choose, I shared some with our healer. 🙂
This was one of my favorite things about coming to Bali and was truly an experience I will never forget.
