Africa is beautified with fascinating cultures from the Samburu people of Kenya to the Berber of Morocco and the Suku of Southwestern Congo. In this blog post, we shall be looking at the healing dance of the San tribe of Southern Africa.
Often referred to as poetry in motion and the hidden language of the soul, dance is as old as man, however, the San people formerly referred to as Bushmen have for centuries, hacked every spiritual benefit of swaying one’s body to soothe and heal the body and soul and rid their abode of evil.
Individuals come together for a spiritual dance that heals them and the community as a whole. If you have seen the movie “the gods must be crazy”, perhaps it is time you enjoy that night’s dance one more time.
The San people are majorly hunters and healers, they have a history many believe to be about thirty thousand years old. They are believed to be one of the first dwellers of Southern Africa and perhaps the world.
The healing dance, often referred to as the trance dance involves members of the community sitting around a fire in an open place, they clap and sing rhythmically while the healers dance and chant healing words. The wordings of the song are words the San people learn from a very young age.
This is where it gets interesting….
The dancers start losing consciousness and get into a state of trance. At this point, it is believed that their spirits and bodies have united with the healing forces and they also have the power to heal.
Take a pause, remember that superhero movie where some spirit enters the main character and everything goes kaboom, yeah, this is it.
The dancers in this state of trance feel the spirit of healing in them and then channel it to those who need healing. They heal the sick by touching the affected body parts of the sick and in some cases, they forcefully eject an illness or evil spirit out of a person’s body by yelling at the disease or spirit and sending it into the air.
The dancers in the state of trance sometimes feel pain, especially when the spirits leave their bodies. At times, they cast themselves into the fire and the people care for them by rubbing them with sweat.
Africans definitely mastered the act of exorcism thousands of years ago.
The San dance does not just heal sickness, it also heals negative habits too, little wonder Africa has always been united until we started to lose our culture.
Conservation has taken away the lands of the people and some of the cultures of the San people have gone away, however, the healing dance is one prominent culture that has stood the test of time.
If you seek the San people in order to experience this magical process, you must journey to the Kalahari region, where some San communities still practice this extraordinary ritual.
