HILOT

HILOT

One of the Philippine Alternative Medicine

Did you know?

The hilot ambiguously refers both to the manghihilot and magpapaanak.  The manghihilot specializes in techniques and treatments applicable to sprains, fractures and muskuloskeletal conditions.  The magpapaanak, besides prenatal visits and delivering babies, often performs the suob ritual. Some healers limit their practice of folkloric therapies to more specialized modalities.

Numerous techniques exist, varying by region and folkloric esoteria. Common in the practice of hilot in the rural areas is the practitioner's' attribution of the healing effect to God, that it is through His guidance that they are able to manipulate the spiritual and energy channels, hoping to expel evil spirits that may have invaded the patient's etheric space and may have caused the physical ailments. One ancient technique of massage utilizes symbolic patterns of the cross, crown of thorns, the rosary, and the nailed hands and feet. (Hilot. Ancient Therapy of the Philippines

• The Manghihilot

In the alternative context, the hilot is a practitioner (or the practice) of the craft of 'chiropractic' manipulation and massage for the diagnosis and treatment of musculoligamentous and muskuloskeletal ailments. In contrast to its western counterpart, the hilot's chiropractic treatment is low on science, high on esotery.

Usually, hilot is a specialization, but in isolated rural areas, many of the albularyos have a familiarity in the use of this modality.

Most hilots, however, do not have any formal education or training. Other than a breech birth in some that is believed to destine or dispose one to this healing art, most rural hilots achieve their skills through an indigenous hand-me-down education.

    

• Lola Ange Goyal Gernale

Lola Ange is an expert faith healer and have encountered different kinds of illnessess before. She already knew that the sprain or “pilay” was the cause of baby’s fever.

She started to massage the baby with hands on healing art then she decided to make  “santiguar” to know whether there’s some certain things affected the baby.

• We heard a rumor about Lola Ange and her ritual faith healing activities. So we’ve decide to visit on her residence at Lahong Bulan Sor. Lucky we are, because on that day she had many patient. We witnessed some of her faith healing activity with her devoters. One patient that caught our attention was the baby girl. According to her mother she had a fever so she decided to consult Lola Ange.

THE PROCESS OF HILOT

It is a kind of therapeutic or physical manipulation that has a good influence on the veins, bones and muscles, but in a different way than an ordinary massage, because here we also use medicinal plants, oil made from the roots of different herbs such as various herbs. That works on bio-energy with its application to the skin to a certain part of the body and determines which part of the body needs necessary attention and recovers balance and harmony to the body.