1. Ni Wayan Nuriasih: A Close-Up
Look to the Famed Healer
Ni Wayan Nuriasih is a smart, determined, and a slick businesswoman and
healer. You may have heard about her background from the Eat, Pray, Love
book: divorced and severely abused by her former husband, Wayan is a
fourth generation healer and she healed herself from that emotional and
physical trauma. Since then, she has been unstoppable as a healer in Bali.
Quick to see opportunities and know exactly what she needs to do, Wayan
reads a lot, learns a lot, asks a lot of questions to her seniors, and able to
create and sell savvy natural medicine products to solve common health
issues.
This woman speaks with a strong presence. If Ketut Liyer’s so soft-spoken and
speaks slowly, Wayan is a whirlwind. She speaks firmly, confidently, and quickly.
She sometimes speaks English voluntarily. She promotes herself and her
products like she does it every hour of the day. She probably really does that. She
knows her stuff and is not afraid to flaunt it.
Before starting the interview, she already promotes her latest products. Beside
creating herbal medications, she also makes herbal crackers.
She starts the conversation by showing OZIP the latest products that she cooks:
crackers made from gotu kola leaves (a South American plant), papaya leaves,
and star gooseberry leaves.
“This cracker gives you good blood circulation, lower your cholesterol, strong
power, and keep young,” she says, explaining the benefits of gotu kola leaves. “It
is very fresh, organic, no MCG, no preservatives.”
“The other one is made from papaya leaves to give you energy, calcium, and to
help heal mosquito bites. I also made crackers from star gooseberry leaves (daun
katuk), and beluntas leaves, well this one can reduce bad breath and bad body
odour.”
Wayan explained that people can be reluctant to have herbal medications in its
usual form, particularly children. By cooking crackers, people would treat that as
a snack or food, not herbal medication.
Wayan promoted herself unrelentingly. “If you want to write about me, you
should try my treatment. How can you write about me if you don’t know for sure
my quality?”
In Wayan’s shop, Balinese Traditional Healing Centre, in Ubud, visitors paid
850,000 rupiah to get her complete healing package. That includes body reading

2. to identify health problems, massage, bath, and fortune telling, all with Wayan’s
special herbal medications and massage combination. As OZIP can testify, it was
great to be treated by Wayan. She specifically told you about your health
problems, and gave practical advice.
Indeed, Wayan is no amateur. She was only ten years old when she started to
help her grandfather to concoct herbal medicine. “Even though I just helped with
washing the leaves, or mashing the ingredients, I was already familiar in this
herbal medication environment since that age.”
But Wayan was hungry for knowledge in this field. She wanted to catch up with
the rest of her family, who are all known as healers.
“For me to be able to heal someone, I got an advantage in that my family
were all doing this. But I tried to study further through books. I read books from
all places. I read Usada Bali book, Javanese books, American books, Madura
books. I researched all the herbs and leaves and homeopathy. I also saw many
teachers and practicing healers, from Java, Jakarta, Bali, whoever has a reliable
prescription which works, I learnt from them. I asked them, in whatever way, so
that they would tell me their secrets. So, I know stuff about the herbal medicine
from the books, as well as sharing and exchanging unique ways of healing from
other healers. I went to university, but I studied Education, not Natural Medicine
and Healing.”
As for the massage, it is well known that Wayan can give great massages, most
notably to cure impotence. She learnt from her grandfather and she also gained
certificates from massage courses.
“But those are modern teachers. I combine modern techniques with traditional
massage techniques, so it is more patented and more “me”. I can do Healing
Massage, Hot Massage, and Traditional Massage.”
What Wayan said she did not do though, contrary to the rumours being
circulated, was hiring people (men) to help women have children (if their
husbands are impotent).
Other than herbal medicine and massage, another feature of Wayan’s
complete package treatment is reading the body to identify illnesses,
characteristic, personality and problems. To be able to do this, Wayan used the
help of a special healing God whose name she did not reveal.
“Before I do that, I pray. I pray to check someone’s body, where he lives, what is
his name…I do that with incense, to identify the situation of someone’s body. I
asked to Healing God. I can’t say His name. After I pray, I can know what’s good
from someone, and what’s bad from someone…”
When reading someone, she always started from the head. First, she checked
their memories and mind.

3. “If someone has a busy mind, it can cause them to lose focus and unable to
concentrate, have tired face, low energy and low power, and stomach ache,
because of a lot of gas in his stomach. Then, I will check their calcium, cholesterol
level, blood glucose levels. With that information, I start the massage. It opens
the skin’s pores, help the flow of blood circulation, and help to remove toxins
from the body.”
Wayan uses ingredients such as tumeric, garlic, onion, aloe vera. She
explained slowly that every body parts require different medicine, just like
different problems needs different solution.
“But my herbal medicine works right two hours after treatment. This
treatment is good to create one harmonious, balanced body and reactivate dead
cells, and also for healing from your head to your feet. If something is not right
with the body, such as lymphatic blow, too much gas on the stomach, too much
acid in the body which can cause stomach pain, headaches because of low blood
pressure, too much tension which can cause neck and shoulder pain, we have the
General Central Treatment.”
When asked what illnesses she can heal though, Wayan said it is not done
among the healers to claim they can heal this illness or that illness and to count
how many illnesses they can heal.
“It feeds our ego, and it’s not good to do that, so I can’t answer what
illnesses I can heal. But, many people with all kinds of illnesses come to me, and
with God’s permission, I managed to make them better. I have tried to heal
people with cancer. I combined modern and traditional medicine. I keep
learning, that is why I can do that.”
What happened if they didn’t get better? “If I can’t heal them after I tried
first, I will bring them to the temple. Then I will refer them to a more
experienced healer. “
Wayan has always been a firm believer in traditional healing. “For me,
traditional healing differed greatly to modern medicine, and I don’t mean to
degrade modern healing and medication, but I really like traditional healing
because it doesn’t have a negative effect and it works very quickly. In just about
two hours, you can feel the difference.”
Wayan is more proud about her ability to heal, not her ability to palm read.
“I just read your palm, it’s just knowledge. I just learnt it from books and
teachers. Many people can read palms, but not everyone can heal people.”
Wayan has a soft spot for Elizabeth Gilbert. They still contact each other
through email and she admitted that Liz is a rare creature.
“She is the most kind, sincere and genuine person that I have ever met. She
helped raise funds for me. I prayed so hard that she will meet a boyfriend, and
she did meet Felipe (her husband now) three days later. Then, when the book
(Eat, Pray, Love) was almost launched, Felipe came to me and asked me to pray

4. for the book’s success. I prayed with special offerings and meditated several days
for them. “