Stressed? Overworked and tired? Perhaps healing through herbology is your new frontier

The idea of healing has changed radically over the years. For some, medicines and traditional treatments are no longer the norm. For those more in tune with their spiritual selves, herbology and spiritual healing have become a way of life.

Belinda van Pype spent her life in a corporate setting, running her own business and dealing with the immense stress that goes with it.

After 25 years as a personal trainer, and harsh running sessions nearly every day, Belinda developed a serious back problem. She found herself in a back brace.

She turned down surgery when a neurosurgeon suggested it. “I knew I could heal myself. I needed to stabilise my core to support my back, but I could barely move to do a sit-up,” she explained. “That excruciating pain made me realise how much energy I had in my body. I took the pain energy and turned it around.”

Today Belinda runs a herbology and healing centre alongside Mbali Khumalo. Mbali is an initiated sangoma. She is, for the most part, a water-based sangoma who uses moving water, such as in a river, to heal.

“I do divining. I call on my ancestral realm to connect with theirs. If something’s wrong, it might be because of something you’ve experienced in your past, or past life,” Mbali intoned, providing an example. “Someone comes in who struggles with their relationships. We find that, maybe, they have had issues with their parents in their past.”

Belinda, on the other hand, works with energy and the body’s seven chakras.

“A chakra is nothing like an organ. It’s an energy pool. Each chakra gives a separate energy.”

Belinda provides chakra balancing through exercises, meditation and massages to help with work, relationships, to focus, and so on. Through classes such as the sunrise goddess dance, goddess water ritual, spiritual vision board, traditional healing, reigniting yourself and others, the two spiritual healers help their clients reset their minds, bodies and spirits.