In this episode, we hear a presentation by Dr Bettina Borg Cardona on music, dance and holistic healing at the ancient Greek sanctuary of Epidaurus (You can watch the presentation here).

Bettina explores Epidaurus as one of the most famous therapeutic landscapes of the ancient world: a place of pilgrimage, sacred ritual, dream incubation, natural beauty and divine healing, where people travelled to seek the aid of Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine and healing.

The presentation looks at how healing at Epidaurus took place within a landscape that was both sacred and natural, surrounded by mountains, temples, altars, water, trees, ritual spaces and the elemental forces of earth, fire, water and air.

A central focus of the episode is the importance of music and dance within the sanctuary. Bettina discusses the role of Apollo, god of music and medicine, and explores the paean, a circular song-dance associated with healing, relief, renewal and deliverance from pain or adversity.

Drawing on ancient Greek ideas of harmony, proportion, the cosmos, sacred centres and ritual movement, the presentation considers how music was understood not only as sound, but as a way of aligning human life with divine, natural and cosmic order.

Bettina also reflects on dream incubation, purification, sacrifice, sacred water, Pythagorean ideas of musical harmony, Eliade’s understanding of ritual and sacred time, and the possibility that healing involved a reorientation of the patient within a larger pattern of relationship and renewal.

The episode closes with the figure of Eros, understood as a cosmic force of relationship between the things of the world. Through this lens, healing becomes a process of coming back into relationship with the whole.

This is a presentation about listening to the landscape, dancing the cosmos, and imagining healing as a return to harmony: with nature, with the sacred, with the body, with the psyche, and with the wider pattern of life.

Links:

Watch the Presentation: https://www.therapeutic-landscapes.org/the-podcast/episode-16-the-music-of-eros

Therapeutic Landscapes: www.therapeutic-landscapes.org