Martial and Healing Rituals as Spiritual Holism

Ancient victory and enduring strength

Rose Sybil evokes the first Pythian Games through the triumph of Eurybatus, weaving his wrestling victory into a meditation on ancient Greek martial and healing rituals as a unified spiritual tradition.

I turn towards Eurybatus with pride, seeing the young man I have watched train and grow now stand as a Spartan warrior, soon to compete in pálē. We stand on the edge of history at the inception of the Pythian Games — modeled after the Olympic Games but shaped by local Apollonian culture. It is an honor to witness the birth of legacy anew. As I approach, our eyes meet in silent recognition. The fire of determination blazes in his sapphire gaze. I give a brief nod, and he withdraws into himself. Turning inward, he begins the ritual of mental rehearsal while I prepare his body.

I pour oil from the aryballos and begin working it into his muscles, readying him in the manner of our forefathers. His gaze dimmed, already living each aspect of the victory to come. My role is to give him the space to draw his mind into his body, preparing mind and body to think as one. My hands rub warm olive oil across his form with intuitive mastery. The scent fills the air, its smell earthy, sharp, and dynamic. It seeps deep into his flesh; each stroke ignites his blood with fire. His limbs pulse with power, the strength of our ancestors flowing through him, bound by this living ritual. The oil becomes a second skin, a shield linking us to them.

His breath steadies, eyes still dilated. He must live it all first in mind for the body to later remember, to think in harmony with the mind’s intent. I feel the rhythm building within him as I press dust into the shield of oil. The ritual preparation complete with the last press of my hands, he is reborn beneath their touch. Blood stirs, the body comes alive, the mind begins to dance as his energetic spirit reaches to claim triumph.

Eurybatus’ eyes come into focus. Sunlight filters through the open space and trees, casting long, expectant shadows across the sandy ground. We nod to each other. His powerful, nude form rises to meet his opponent. The courtyard stirs to life as Eurybatus steps into the circle to face a Thessalian. The sharp slap of bodies meeting echoes against the mountainside. This familiar sound warms my heart and a soft smile arcs my lips. The air is thick with sweat, dust, and the lingering scent of earthy olive oil.

He pushes forward, eyes locked on his opponent. They circle, grappling, each probing for weakness. Thought meets instinct with quick muscles that act without hesitation, embodying a mind sharpened by visualization. Calm and centered, fully in his knowing body. Strong as an ox, Eurybatus can overpower Spartans larger than himself, but he does not rely on brute force alone. With a clever feint, he pulls the arm forcefully. The Thessalian overcorrects backwards, off-balance. Eurybatus charges forward in sync with his opponent, taking him to the ground. Victory. First round.

The second round is a reversal of cunning. Eurybatus knew that pulling the arm would make the Thessalian expect the same trick. As predicted, the opponent leans into it instead of pulling away. This time, it isn’t a feint. Eurybatus pulls his opponent’s back beneath him and wraps his powerful arms around his torso, lifting the man upside down. A show of strength before slamming him into the ground. Victory. Second round.

The third round takes an unexpected turn. After grappling for some time, Eurybatus twists around the man as the Thessalian sweeps his leg. Our warrior pulls his opponent into his rotating momentum with controlled precision, whipping him around. He presses the Thessalian’s hip to the ground a mere second before crashing beside him. Victory. Final round.

They both rise. Eurybatus lifts his arm in glory as he strides past our fellow Spartans. Daylight casts a halo of oily dust and misty sweat around his mighty form. He scans the crowd, then turns to the marble statue of Apollo, who is looking down at us over the wild, sacred landscape. A priest approaches in solemn ritual and places the laurel crown upon Eurybatus’ head. The first Pythian victory in pálē is given to us Spartans. All feel this mighty honor, even if we show little beyond quiet grins and lifted chests. Like our warriors who fall in battle, Eurybatus earns kléos. His name will not be forgotten.

I reach for the curved, polished bronze of my strigil, glinting in the sunlight as he approaches. With ancestral technique, I draw it across our victor’s body, scraping away the residue of the fight. The movement is an ancient caress against his skin, each deliberate stroke sliding along muscle and sinew. This ritual draws up his lifeblood, restoring body and spirit to balance. I see his skin warming to a nice ruddy hue, tissues smoothing and pulsing with vitality almost as if the gods themselves breathe more life into him. The crowd watches as the sound of stringed instruments emerges, engulfing us. The energy in the air is as palpable to me as his warm flesh.

Jostling the muscles now begins. Divine inspiration glides over bruised skin, loosening the knots of strain. My fingers firmly coax his tight body to flow freely once more. This completes the circle of healing, restoring strength after exertion and strain. A quiet respect hangs between us and the Thessalian across the way, as he receives the same care from his aleiptes. The ritual of preparation and recovery is as ancient and vital as the combat itself, proceeding from it and extending beyond it. Its physical effect is the visible form of its spiritual essence passed down through centuries of blood, and embodied in the competitors themselves. More than just violent contests of strength, Delphi offers a stage for divine balance between struggle and harmony expressed through man’s continual growth towards excellence.

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Healing arts in Archaic Greece evolved alongside martial arts. By the time of the Olympic and later Pythian Games, these practices were already well established. Healing pre- and post-training rituals were part of a holistic process integrating mind, body, and spirit on an individual level and interconnecting that with living ethnos. This integrative worldview was only later broken apart by the medicalization that emerged centuries later, as seen in the work of those following Hippocrates. Classification and definition come long after something has been lived and embodied. The compartmentalization of healing from its original context not only affected medicine, it also reduced martial arts from a spiritual discipline rooted in cultural holism into a mechanized practice, severing its connection to inner development and ancestral continuity.

Regarding preparation and healing practices in ancient European martial arts, such as pankration or pálē, there is a modern tendency to perceive a disconnect in hindsight that did not exist at the time. The use of the strigil, for example, functioned similarly to modern scraping tools like gua sha. The assumption today is that the original intent must have been different, dismissed as superstition simply because it was a spiritual or ritualistic European practice and only by accident that it happened to have functional effects similar to eastern scraping techniques. No one dismisses ancient Chinese healing practices as a dynamic, holistic approach to the spiritual and physical that had quantifiable functional effects. This worldview, which severs ancient European rituals from their practical function, is common. Meanwhile, it is fashionable to regard other races’ cultural practices as sophisticated and holistic.

The schism between our understanding of function unfolding from ritual reinforces the flawed belief that something only begins to exist once it is defined, rather than recognizing that definitions merely describe parts of an already existing whole that can grow and change with new phenomena emerging, which can then be defined. In doing so, we have traded the view of the whole for a fixation on isolated parts. Hippocrates did not create the practices he described; he articulated aspects of a living system that were already present and broke them down to component parts for use, just as Newton did not create gravity by observing and expressing its effects and components. I believe that ancient European healing arts were deeply integrative expressions of generational knowledge, remedies, and ritual formed by hard-lived inspiration. Through trial and error, they continually reformed these practices passed down with care, connecting the body to the soul and the whole of the person in a living chain of distinct cultural expressions with newly added layers over time.

The ancients understood all physiological processes as spiritually driven. Their rituals were not separate from healing; the functional aspects were an extension of them as the physical is an extension of the spiritual. When I consider gymnasium or palaestrae combat sports and the rituals surrounding them, I sense an integrative whole just as rich and complete as any other ancient healing and martial arts system. This difference in worldview matters deeply and defines how we relate to ourselves, others, and the world around us. War and love are intimately connected, just as harm and healing are.

Hormesis perfectly illustrates how the body becomes stronger by undergoing progressive harm and healing cycles. The inverse is also true; chronic injury, when freshly and acutely reinjured, provides the potential for complete healing. By understanding and reclaiming this full circle, harmful training becomes something dynamic, whole, and alive like ourselves. It is an expression of a living culture, not merely the input and output of a physiological machine. A machine that breaks down is lost or needs replacement parts, but the body can experience miraculous healing through holistic transition, not instantaneous like switching out a part in a car. Our understanding of brain damage used to be as limited, but now we know that it is possible for synapses to regenerate. Healing is driven by a deeper spiritual process than compartmentalized physiological treatments in isolation.

There is much talk about visualization in sports, which is important before the act. In the moment itself, you must be fully in the body. Mental preparation activates the synapses so that the body is already familiar with the path. The brain does not distinguish between the imagined and the real, it is physiological rehearsal. Ancient preparation was far superior because they didn’t just take the isolated component of visualization but had a healer warm and prepare the body while the visualization was occurring. But once you are in the action, you must truly be in it. Thinking abstractly in terms of visualization during action increases the risk of injury. By trusting the body and allowing it to think, your mind integrates into and embodies it instead of being stuck in a mental form. When you step into a river and remain trapped in your head, you become stiff and likely to slip. If you are trying to visualize when you should be present, you will miss the moment. Your awareness is not confined to your skull; it moves through your entire body. Let it settle in your foot and through it feel the rocks, feel it extend through your leg and your entire body thinks as one simultaneously, fluid like the river. The foot will speak to the mind, the entire body synchronized in the moment.

Some of these concepts are found in the book Thinking Body, Dancing Mind, which draws on Daoist principles. It does a solid job of outlining the arc of mental preparation, embodied action, and post-practice recovery. That said, it still falls short of a holistic system. The distinctions between Eastern and European traditions — both in terms of culture and spirituality — are just as important as their common ground. The contrasts help illuminate what’s truly unique about each system. While the book is definitely worth reading, it already leans toward a kind of subtle mechanization just a few steps removed from the fully modern mindset. It describes parts of the whole, but leaves out the essential elements that only emerge through full ritual immersion — whether in the palaestrae of ancient Greece or, I’m sure, in Daoism’s own more complete ritual forms.

First off, the book reflects a decontextualized slice of Daoist healing systems, already stripped of the group ritual processes that formed them. These weren’t just physical practices for the individual; they were shared experiences that rooted the spirit of their ethnos. When you remove the group ritual elements, you lose the spiritual essence that the functional aspects extend from, making it a lifeless simulacrum and isolating the person utilizing them. Cultural transmission is deeply personal. It flows through lineage, connecting people to their ancestors while forming a natural hierarchy. It's not static; it’s alive, constantly evolving. Group healing rituals, just like group preparation, bonded the training unit and grounded everyone in ancestral connection as the foundation they grew from.

Modern perspectives often glorify the visible act in isolation like a screenshot, without understanding the full system behind it. We treat the body like a machine: push it to the edge, expect it not to break, and if it does, toss it aside. Look at how many veterans are pushed past human limits, then handed pills, given garbage medical treatment, or end up homeless. They’re broken and then discarded, like a resource in an international market instead of as warriors in a living ethnos. This mindset completely ignores basic healing principles like hormesis or that rebreaking a chronic injury can create full healing potential. People might watch videos of brutal limb conditioning, but they never see what comes after: the massage, herbal remedies like dit da jow and herbal ice, and rest. What’s missing is the spiritual group ritual healing as the underlying context from which these practices emerged.

The second issue the book stumbles over is its assumption that hyper-aggression in European sports somehow excludes the ritual holism of visualization in preparation, embodied performance, and post-practice healing. The author lumps Western expressions of competitiveness and aggression together with the very lack of pre- and post-ritual integration that the book otherwise critiques. This is not done intentionally, but it reflects a broader perceptual disconnect regarding the distinct spiritual essence in European martial and healing traditions. Yes, European systems pursued extreme limits in competition, but that pursuit in no way diminishes the holism of their ritual experience. These rituals were an expression of the European spirit and flowed from virtues unique to European culture — virtues that often idealized domination-based systems over submission-based systems. Both have their value, but they select for different physical and psychological traits because they stem from distinct cultural essences.

The key distinction between domination- and submission-based martial systems lies in the specific virtues prioritized by a culture’s spirit. Domination systems emphasize raw strength, aggression, athleticism, and overwhelming force — even their strategic cunning has a different quality. Submission-based systems, on the other hand, elevate technique that allows efficacy regardless of size or brute strength, precisely because those traits are neither emphasized nor selected for within that cultural framework. This difference runs deeper than technique, shaping social values in the image of their distinct virtues. It helps explain contrasts in honor systems: for example, in domination-based cultures, frankness is favorable. In submission-based cultures, the same bluntness is interpreted as rudeness or a lack of harmony and respect for status.

The values embedded in martial systems reflect broader cultural intuitions about hierarchy, control, and communication. This distinction is why the most extreme martial culture of ancient Greece, the Spartans, did not participate in pankration competitions, but instead focused on other Olympic events. They rejected submission as a cultural ideal. In their pankration training, they intuitively understood when to release, granting both sides of the sparring exchange greater insight and control over the body. Submission-based systems place the locus of control on the submission itself, reinforcing an entirely different form of power structure, cooperation, intuition, and responsibility even if it seems like a small difference.

Still, though pankration was a submission-based sport in terms of rules — the match ending with one opponent submitting — was far more aggressive and dangerous than many Eastern competitive combat systems. This is not a matter of superiority or inferiority but a spiritual and cultural distinction unique to Europeans. Western martial arts tend to be more youthful, intense, and competitive to form a meritocratic hierarchy, while Eastern systems often emphasize longevity, internal cohesion, and inclusion in a static status-based ordering. Recognizing this spiritual difference does not negate the fact that both are holistic systems or that healing and camaraderie were important, but that they functioned differently, unique to the spirit of the people. Any future revival or evolution of martial and healing arts in the West must be rooted in our own distinct spiritual virtues. These systems should be rebuilt as complete ritual cycles — not imitations of Eastern models even if we can use them to infer what we have lost, but deeply connected to our own lineage, blood, and cultural expression.

When training integrates the body of the individual and people as a unified whole, strength becomes more than mechanical… it becomes functional, alive, and adaptive. Modern conceptions of strength tend to be compartmentalized and rigid, often missing the growth that comes from a truly holistic process. Holistic systems are stronger and create more resilient people with the capacity to extract meaning and beauty from harm, because healing itself is a form of strength. Martial and healing arts together form an alchemical whole. They reflect a ritualistic and deeply human integration of physical, emotional, and spiritual experience.

We are not isolated, unbreakable monoliths, even if domination-based systems can be perceived outwardly to condition towards that ideal. “The strength of the wolf is the pack, and the strength of the pack is the wolf”. Strength pursued without the wisdom of healing becomes brittle. It’s through group ritual and healing that we form more resilient people and, by extension, more capable units and enduring hierarchies. It’s through these shared processes that we participate in a living lineage, transmitting the wisdom and refinement of our ancestors. It’s our responsibility not just to recreate group ritual martial and healing traditions, but to continually renew them, adapting and expanding them to offer a more complete whole to our progeny.