A Balinese seer “read” her spine. She ate a famous “vitamin lunch.” She sought serenity in temples; spiritual healing in blessings. She rode an elephant.

And when the movie version of Eat Pray Love opens today, Denise Nieman will be in the audience, recalling the rapturous week she spent in Bali in May, retracing one leg of author Elizabeth Gilbert’s yearlong journey of self-discovery.

“I’m a spiritual person so I identify with those kinds of quests,” said Nieman. “Besides, Bali has been on my bucket list for years.”

For those living underground for the past four years, Eat Pray Love is Gilbert’s memoir of a year of gelato-ing her way through Italy, navel-gazing in India and finding balance (and a sexy Brazilian boyfriend) on the Indonesian island of Bali. The book has touched a chord of longing in millions of women, even if they aren’t reeling from a divorce and a subsequent disastrous love affair, like Gilbert.

Moviegoers will no doubt sigh in envy as Julia Roberts, playing Gilbert, resurrects herself through food, spiritual reawakening – and Javier Bardem.

Not that Nieman is suffering from a broken heart or a spiritual crisis. She’s happily married to her husband, Joe, who manages the Cruzan Amphitheatre. She loves her job of 14 years as the Palm Beach County attorney, although a parade of disgraced, resigning county commissioners has made for some long weeks.

Like other fans of the book, Nieman yearned for some of Gilbert’s hard-won equilibrium. That same desire is fueling the travel industry’s newest niche: spiritual tourism, aimed primarily at women. Eat Pray Love tours have sprung up in Italy, India and Bali. In Bali alone, the number of visitors more than doubled in the four years since the book was published.

Nieman signed up for a solo Bali trip from Spirit Quest Tours in Las Vegas with the hope of acquiring some healing tranquility. (Additional Bali tours are scheduled for September and June 2011.)

“I like the idea of experiences rather than stuff,” said Nieman, an avid traveler.

Spiritual growth – not reinvention – is the goal of these travelers, said Halle Eavelyn, co-owner of Spirit Quest Tours .

“Going on these trips is a way to reclaim themselves, to bring back meaning into their lives. Denise just wanted to remember why she loved her job,” Eavelyn said.

Once in Bali, Nieman realized that even Gilbert’s flamboyant descriptions didn’t adequately describe the exoticism of the temple-strewn island or the beatific Balinese people.

Denise Nieman went on a Spirit Quest trip to Bali in May '10 to visit some of the places mentioned in the book, Eat Pray Love.

“They are genuinely happy. I didn’t feel that they were happy to see me because I was a tourist with money, they’re just happy. And I wanted to understand that,” said Nieman, still amazed at the lovely offerings of fruit, rice and flowers in handmade palm baskets that the Balinese strew daily on sidewalks and streets.

The group of about a dozen women and two men included a visit to Ketut, a ninth-generation Balinese healer and major character in Gilbert’s book, who has become one of the island’s prime tourist attractions.

For $25, he inspected the women’s hands, spines, even their legs, then issued almost the same divination: they were smart, pretty and wouldn’t have arthritis or accidents.

His diagnosis differed only slightly for Nieman.

“He said I had two kinds of smart, head smart and heart smart,” said Nieman. “I thought that was pretty cool. That’s how I like to show up in life.”

After a “vitamin lunch,” where diners choose therapeutic dishes meant to cure ailments, the women received body readings from Wayan, the now-famous practitioner of traditional Balinese medicine and friend of Gilbert’s.

“It was pretty eerie. She honed in on what would require blood work here, like people with high cholesterol,” said Nieman, who was told she ate too much sugar. “And she was right. Before I left, I was popping M&Ms like they were going out of style.”

That the artistic Balinese have both “jobs and vocations,” impressed Nieman, who has a serious day job and an artistic alter ego. At www.concertchick.com, she writes about her love for rock ‘n’ roll and sells “Celebrate Yourself” T-shirts she helped design.

On Bali, bliss and harmony arrived on Tanah Lot, a small island sacred to the Balinese. At low tide, she joined a long line of villagers in glowing, gold-embossed sarongs, walking across black lava sand to receive a blessing at one of the island’s many temples.

“I was mesmerized,” she said.

But Nieman’s biggest “aha” moment came while shopping at the John Hardy jewelry factory.

(And yes, she fully understands the irony.)

Amid confusion over credit cards, the women began to apologize, over and over, to the Balinese cashier.

“She looked at us, and said, ‘already forgotten.’ The message was, you guys are still fretting over something that’s over, and you’re missing all this beauty around you. That was a great take-away. ‘Already forgotten.’ Live in the moment.”

She’s trying.

More about ‘Eat Pray Love’
Eat. Pray. Love. Buy! Retailers cash in on film, book
Bardem says co-starring with Roberts was ‘easy’
Find a theater and showtime, read reviews
Photos: Film stills and premier