Hot Flashes and SORE Muscles

Yesterday was a day for visiting healers here. At 8:30, I drove over to Wayan’s for the trip to visit the Holy Knife. I wanted to take the motor bike so I could come back slowly taking photo’s. She was a bit in disarray having lost the phone number for her driver Mario. By 9:00, she still hadn’t found it and Deanne had arrived and was waiting. Eventually, I decided to go on by myself fairly confident that I could find it. Deanne has more time here and considered riding with me. However, I wanted to linger my way back and felt it really is better to have Wayan there to translate at least for your first session or two in order to hear comments the Holy Knife makes while working on you.

He chattered away with me yesterday. I remembered the way there because we had ridden it by motor bike on our trip to Tanah Lot two days ago. Some of the “Ogoh Ogho’s” were still there and provided great landmarks! The “Ogoh Ogho” are effigies of demons they parade the night before NYEPI for their New Year here which fell on last Saturday. The silent “Ogoh Ogoh” remain silently standing in many villages.

Across a bridge that I remembered after 20 minutes or so on my motor bike, I started looking for an alley on my left with a bright orange/reddish water tank on top of the opposite side of the street. I found it, drove down the alley and walked back in to see the Holy Knife wearing my sarong and sash.

To visit a temple or ceremony here means to dress properly. In the case of temples, shoulders are to be covered as well as knees. When I visited the Holy Knife before, I wore a tank top and he asked me to remove it. I wore my new sarong with the sash tied around the waist. The body has two regions here, the lower region which is considered “dirty” and the upper region which is considered holy. Thus the sash to separate the two parts of the body.

He was working with an older woman when I arrived and smiled at me. When they finished, I watched them go through the prayer ceremony I would do when finished. A blessing with incense, special water is poured into the hands three times and sipped, a fourth time it’s poured and used to cleanse the head and flowers are used for saying prayers.

It was my turn and he smiled while nodding for me to join him. I sat facing away from him and could see his eyes defocus already as if he were looking off in the distance as he gazed at my energy. His hands tapped the surface of my back from place to place reaching my neck when he let out an excited “Ohhhhhh!” and started talking in Bahasa. I knew whatever followed next would hurt but only for a little bit. He placed his kriss on the spot where my head meets the neck and on the right side of my spine. It was very tender and painful. He removes the kriss/knife and repeats several times until the energy shifts. As he does so, he chuckles.

The last time I was there, I learned that chuckling with him helps release the energy. This time, I couldn’t help myself as he continued to feel his way around my body, letting go with another excited “Ohhhhhh” before working on the next spot.

He finished with several spots very low on my back and I turned around. More spots were discovered, more chuckling and pain, more heat arose. Every time I’ve worked with him, I’ve become extremely hot, almost as if a fever has temporarily invaded my body. It was morning and cool. I was burning up and sweating. My entire body felt like it was emitting a field of hot energy.

When he got to my foot, he found an especially tender spot where my reflexologist worked. Tender as it was, the energy passed immediately and he worked his way up my right leg. He poked and prodded a lot around the right knee finding many spots to work with. I could feel the tightness along those muscles relax the moment he finished. Then, he continued on up toward the hip and found the exact spot which has been painfully tight.

With that he finished working on me, laughing and smiling and grabbing my legs seemingly to say how good of shape I am in. We did our prayers after that.

In the afternoon, I met my friend Mary to go visit the Maharsi. I posted a file describing her yesterday. We arrived and waited. Over an hour later, after a peaceful wait, she arrived. The ceremony she was doing at the temple was stopped for rain. The man who works with her had called to say they were late. Mary and I sat and talked. Patience is an important part of life here. Schedules don’t mean a whole lot! It’s not a place for impatience or rigidity.

When she arrived, we sat and talked for a long time. I assumed we were waiting for others to arrive. An hour later, she asked if we were ready? I wasn’t sure what I was “ready” for but I was. Mary explained a little about the process when Maharsi simply described it as being “like a shower”. I knew it would be wet so brought extra clothes to put on.

We were about to experience a Malukat which is a form of energy cleaning performed by a priest or priestess for cleansing the Spiritual and energy space around the body. In Mexico, they do something vaguely similar called a “limpia” which is a cleansing as well.

Here’s a larger version of the photo of Maharsi:



Watching the Maharsi pray is like watching a performance. Her hands move so gracefully though “mudra’s” which all are considered to carry different energy. She is praying and speaking while doing so with the softest look of grace on her face. Then, she prayed over Mary first before dong the malukat with me. Gently pouring water over the head a little at a time while reciting different prayers, I felt a chill. Some chills are physical, others rise from deeper in the being like when you get goose bumps. That deeper chill is what I felt. What a special experience.

Last night, after having those two sessions in one day, I was a bit disoriented and had to really concentrate even deciding where to eat or if I was hungry. That little decision took a lot of energy. I had a good dinner and wandered home to jump in the pool again. Water always helps clear the energy and was so refreshing after a full day. My friends Maks and Yelena from Russia came and joined me at the pool for a while.

This morning, I was so sore! I was never really touched like with the reflexologist or with massage but my muscles ached. My hips and low back were sore, my shoulders ached more than anything, the base of the neck where the Holy Knife started was tender to the touch!

I jumped into the pool around 7:00 to wake me up and after the rain last night, the pool was really cold! Now, as I’m finishing writing this, most of the soreness has passed. The only soreness I’m feeling at the moment is the soreness of sitting too long so I’ll shift that and go do something.

This being my last full day in Ubud and with a motor bike, I’ll probably go do a little exploring. There is a temple not too far carved out of stone and beyond that, a spring where people go for the holy water. If the sun came back out, I’d be tempted to spend hours lounging by the pool and enjoying the opportunity to do so before returning to Colorado in five days!