A trip to the Bone Healer – and a different side of Bali
A visit to a medicine man puts one pain-ridden writer on the road to the best of Bali’s less-visited attractions
“The Bone Healer can fix anything but a broken heart.”
Balians are said to harness energy from the universe and are called upon to cure everything from the common cold to cancer. Most are quacks and there is no empirical evidence to show their methods deliver results. But the Bone Healer’s patients swear by him, claiming he provides better long-term outcomes than modern medicine. I know this because I’m one of them.
The treatment took less than a minute and the effect was immediate: a 70 to 80 per cent reduction in pain. It was also permanent, or it had been until a few weeks ago, when I hurt my back again. When the pain returned with a vengeance, I knew what I had to do.
Now 72, Sudarsana doesn’t appear to have aged a single day since I last saw him. Dressed in a sarong with a decorative sash and sporting a mane of long white hair collected loosely into a bun, he looks the archetype of an Asian healer but does not act the part, asking to see any scans or diagnoses from a hospital or Western practitioner. After glancing at my X-rays, he tells me to sit on the floor with my back towards him. Pressing his knee into my lower spine, he grabs my shoulders and, in one quick move, gives me a whopping back crack, the same thing he did last time I visited. I yelp with fright and then sigh as the pain melts away. And with that, my treatment is complete. I thank him profusely, stuff a few notes into a donation box and leave.