Page 130 - EBOOK_Jamu: The Ancient Indonesian Art of Herbal Healing

The visit sparked off Laurentia’s interest in herbalism and she decided to learn more about
homeopathy.
When she married, she came to live in Indonesia and began to study herbs seriously. Nyonya
Lauren, as she is now known, travelled all over the archipelago, learning and building up her
extensive knowledge of herbal practices. On a visit to Ambon, she and her husband witnessed a
paralysed old man being repeatedly beaten with stout branches. It transpired this was a local cure: the
beatings stimulate blood circulation, warm the skin and open the pores to allow fine powder from
flower stamens to stick to the skin and enter the body through the pores, thus starting the healing
process. By the end of the week the patient slowly began to move again.
Nyonya Lauren’s approach is holistic. She studies the patient’s aura in order to make a
diagnosis. “You’ll notice I always sit with the light behind me, so I can see someone’s aura clearly,”
she says. Once the basic information has been assimilated, Nyonya Lauren works by moving her
hands slowly in front of her, looking to see where the aura enters the body. If it goes into the heart
and out again, Nyonya Lauren examines that area in detail to check out the problem. The final stage
is the divining and prescribing of jamu.
“The aura is a magnetic field around the body comprising a mass of different colours.” As she
spoke Nyonya Lauren pushed a Polaroid snap of what appeared to be an abstract painting across the
desk. “That is a photograph of an aura,” she said. It was a mass of reds, yellows and purples, each
colour running haphazardly into the next.
“Green on the right side of the body means a bladder problem,” she diagnosed, “Yellow
indicates the kidneys. Lots of red shows the problem is emotional. Most children have auras
composed entirely of soft colours.” Over the years, she says she has received many jamu recipes
through meditation.
To illustrate her point, Nyonya Lauren cited the case of a cancer patient who showed no
improvement after taking the usual medicines. “I got fed up with it,” Nyonya Lauren admits, “but I
felt there had to be an answer somewhere. I began to meditate intensely and was so at one with her I
could feel her pain. Using this technique I received the jamu formula, the types of herbs and the
quantities. To my joy, the treatment was successful. You always have to look inside yourself to find
the solution—it’s an inner feeling.” Originally Nyonya Lauren took her formulæ from books, but
nowadays she creates special mixtures herself from these “inner feelings”. She maintains we all
possess such an inner power, we just don’t use it.

The Collector
Before a healer or a jamu-maker can diagnose an illness, make a jamu, or
recommend a course of action, they must be supplied with the raw materials of
their trade. The rural pickers, often family members of a healer with knowledge
of traditional medicine, fill this gap. They are rarely seen because they roam the
countryside around their villages, gathering the leaves and plants that are so

familiar to them. Some collectors grow medicinal plants and shrubs themselves,
but sourcing the raw materials for jamu is usually a more casual, haphazard
process.
Good pickers know every plant in their neighbourhood and identify them
easily. But even experts make mistakes. This can occur when different varieties
of the same plant grow together; pickers are not always able to distinguish
between leaves that are suitable for making jamu, and those that are not. Thus, a