Philippines Traditional Massage or Hilot: Alternative Holistic Medicine

I’m in Manila and as luck would have it I had a bad asthma attack yesterday. I haven’t had an attack in two years and I didn’t realize my inhalers are expired. They were not that effective. For the most part of yesterday, I was miserable. My sister called her masseuse to give me a traditional massage or hilot, a special type of deep tissue massage, defined in a holistic site as follows:

Originating in the Philippines, Hilot is a hands-on healing art that involves intuition and massage. The practitioner intuitively scans the body with touch to diagnose areas which are energetically imbalanced. "Hilot" is also a Filipino word used to describe "healer." A Hilot therapist is trained in massage and body/mind connections. Although Hilot is a deep-tissue massage the touch is gentle.

Sita was her name and I had the most fascinating time talking to her. 

Not only does Sita do healing massages, she is also an herbalist and she talked about the Touch me Not plant and the root of the Cogon grass being good for the heart. I told her what I know about healing herbs: hibiscus flowers (lowers blood pressure), ginger and turmeric (anti-inflammatory), bananas (high in potassium), muscovado (high in magnesium).  She knew them all and added more information: boil the leaves of the saba banana because that is very high in potassium, sweet potato shoots were good for something, mangosteen, also good for something, and so on. She said she goes to Leyte (in Central Philippines) once a year to hunt for herbs deep in the forest.

Sita learned how to heal from her mother, and her mother learned from her father, her grandfather from the generation prior. She said that while she and her siblings were taught by her mother, only she became a healer. She also used to follow her grandfather around when he healed people. She talked about helping many people with limited mobility (she talked about freeing a trapped vein or artery),  Once she helped a woman give birth to a breach baby, and she had to bring the mother and infant still attached by the cord to the hospital so the doctor could cut the cord (apparently the law prohibits her from doing so). The doctor interviewed her and was impressed about the breach birth.

In fact, many people in the Philippines turn to native healers rather than Western doctors primarily because they are affordable and probably because they are non-invasive. The healers bring a spiritual element to their healing, so that the therapeutic massage is not just a massage, but is intended to heal with divine help.

Sita comes from Leyte and she talked about Super Typhoon Haiyan or Yolanda that devastated the Philippines in November 2013. She said she had heard about the big storm, and she prayed with a candle lit. She saw a thick cloud of smoke rising from the candle and she knew the typhoon would be bad. She called her son and told him to leave Tacloban. The son spoke to the foreman in the company he worked for and the foreman laughed saying, something like, “We get a lot of typhoons here.” The son went inland and after Haiyan struck, he returned to find the people in his work place dead. Sita said she lost her grandmother because she had swallowed dirty water and even though she survived Haiyan, developed complications and died. Their family home is gone. She told her relatives to move to Manila.

So how did the massage go?

She started with me in a sitting position and, using a coconut oil-based lotion, she worked on my back and neck. She could feel the knots in my muscles and what she called a fever inside. She kneaded with slow deliberate strokes, with just enough pressure so I could feel some pain mixed with pleasure (as she put it).

She had me lay down and she worked some more on my neck, back, thighs, legs, feet, even the head. She had me turn over and she worked on my stomach, thighs, legs, and feet. She had me sit up again and she worked some more on my back, arms, hands.

I’ve had massages in spas, but this was the first time I had one by a native healer.

I had a very interesting time.

Read also

Ghost busters of the Philippines

Two Philippines Historical Tidbits

Tags: Philippines, Filipino, Bisaya, hilot, massage, healing, alternative, holistic

This is all for now,

Cecilia