Paper Paper

Enter the Spirit World: A Comparative Analysis of Traditional Healing Among the Kalahari Kung and the Balian People

Chris Stewart

000051789

HLTH AS108

Professor J. Moynes

January 17, 2009

Enter the Spirit World: A Comparative Analysis of Traditional Healing Among the Kalahari Kung and the Balian People

Crossing Over

“You dance, dance, dance, dance. Then num lifts you up in your belly and lifts you in your back, and you start to shiver. Num makes you tremble; it’s hot.” Just by the sound of this description it can be concluded that the experience of a Kung healing ceremony can not be understood on normal terms. The observer must leave their cold rationality and hard science behind if they wish to understand the effervescence anthropologist Emile Durkheim once witnessed. As Kinachau (Kinsley, 1996), one of the Kung healers describes, “it feels like dying, like being shot with arrows.” Yet, the Kung are only one of many traditional healing cultures that still exist today. The Kalahari Kung of Southern Africa and the Balian people of Indonesia are traditional healing cultures that are both distinct and similar in their effective healing traditions.

Singularities

The Kung and the Balian people have unique ways of selecting and categorizing their healers, explaining sources of illness and disease, and conducting healing rituals.

Each culture sets their healers apart from the larger group in distinctive ways. The Kalahari Kung of South Africa, for example, believe “num” or healing energy exists in most people and can be awakened by anyone. Most of the time the healer’s num is dormant and only surfaces during healing dances. However, once the curative energy is unlocked and the healer enters an altered state of consciousness called “kia” they gain access into the spirit world and become full-fledged healers. Balian healers, on the other hand, tend to specialize more. Unlike the Kung, healing is a profession in Balia, not an innate ability. The...