The Balinese Secret to Harmony (and How We Can Bring It Home)

It’s been just one week since we moved into our new home in Bali, but already life feels like it’s moving to a different rhythm. My daughter has started her second week at school, my husband is finally recovering from his stomach after 2 weeks of being down, and I’m navigating things like banking, groceries, and delivery apps. Slowly, a sense of routine is emerging.

But beneath the practicalities, something else is happening too. Bali has a way of reorienting you — toward community, toward nature, and toward the divine. These three threads weave together in the Balinese philosophy of Tri Hita Karana, or “the three causes of well-being”: harmony with people, harmony with nature, and harmony with spirit.

I didn’t set out to “practice” this philosophy, but in just a short time, I’ve found myself living it.

Harmony with people

Back in Santa Fe, our lives were often centered around our own space — our family, our routines, our circle. Here in our eco-village, life feels different. There are just 13 homes, but within them families from at least eight to ten different nationalities. Community is baked into daily living.

Instead of waving to neighbors across the street, we’re sharing experiences: attending lectures at school together, talking about third-culture kids (a topic I’ll write about separately), and even jumping into spontaneous play. 

Just the other day, I went to pick up my daughter and ended up playing barefoot volleyball with other parents. I had never played before, but there I was, diving into my first-ever game. It wasn’t about being good at it; it was about saying yes, about connection. It struck me how often I would have said no to something like that back home. Here, the natural rhythm is to join in.

Harmony with nature

We also share our home with two geckos I’ve named Jack and Jill. They are large — about six or seven inches long — and they don’t scurry around like most lizards. Instead, they remain still in the same place at the very top of our pitched roof, right in the triangle of the wall. They perch there like sculptures, so still and steady that sometimes I have to remind myself they’re alive. It feels less like they’ve moved into our house, and more like we’ve moved into theirs.

One day, one of them even pooped on Aila. She looked up, totally unfazed, and mentioned it as casually as if she’d spilled a drop of water on herself. I told her it must be a good omen — like when a bird poops on you for luck. Then we laughed, cleaned it up, and moved on.

Another morning, I woke up to find a snail gliding across our living room floor, leaving behind a delicate silver trail. I watched it for a while, wondering where it thought it was going. By the time I came back later, it was gone. Did my husband quietly place it outside? Or is it still living somewhere in our house, tucked into a corner I haven’t found yet?

Back home, I might have been unsettled by these visitors. Here, I find myself smiling at them. They remind me that harmony with nature is less about controlling it and more about coexisting.

Harmony with the divine

And then there’s the spiritual pulse of the island. Every morning on our drive to school, we pass countless offerings — small woven trays filled with flowers, rice, incense, and sometimes candy or bananas. They’re placed in front of homes, in the middle of sidewalks, even on dashboards of cars.

These offerings are called canang sari, and they’re reminders of the Balinese way of honoring the divine. What’s beautiful is how seamlessly they appear in daily life. You don’t need to go to a temple to find sacredness; it’s right there at your feet, in the middle of traffic, or on the steps of a shop.

For me, seeing these offerings is a daily reminder to pause. They make me more aware, more present, more attuned to mystery — whatever “spirit” means for each of us. It doesn’t matter if your connection is through God, the universe, or simply gratitude. The point is the reminder itself: the sacred is never far away.

What harmony really means

In just a week, Bali has invited me to see life through this lens of harmony. It’s not perfect, of course — there are still frustrations with schedules, figuring things out and occasional melt downs from the transition. But beneath it all, there’s a rhythm that says: live with each other, live with nature, live with the unseen.

Back home, it’s so easy to compartmentalize — work here, family there, spirituality over there. But in Bali, it all blends. Geckos share your roof. Snails cross your living room. Strangers invite you into volleyball games. Offerings remind you to breathe and notice.

It makes me wonder: what would life look like if we carried this sense of harmony into our own routines, wherever we live? What if, instead of separating community, nature, and spirit, we allowed them to overlap — and maybe even surprise us?

Tania

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