I recently finished a traditional Banahaw Hilot Healing Treatment, which required seven days of liquid fasting and deep body manipulation. This was my second time doing a long-term liquid fast. Not only does fasting give the whole body a total reset by triggering metabolic and hormonal changes that promote healing, it also repairs cells and removes toxins. But this was my first time to combine it with deep hilot massage.

Well, my path crossed with a medical intuitive and katutubong manggagamot (traditional healer) who works with her spirit healing guides, one of which she said is Mother Mary. She had been healing all across the country, but was told by inner locution and smells of roses to ground her treatments in Mount Banahaw.

Such healers are not new to me. I knew of such healers in the mountain because of my Banahaw friend Bibiano “Boy” Fajardo (BoyF) who had healed himself when doctors gave up on him. He moved into his healing and teaching journey studying traditional healers, championing and teaching the traditional Banahaw hilot locally and abroad before he passed on.

Through him I saw surgical faith healers that would put their hands inside bodies to take out whatever was wrong with the patient; energy healers that through a mere light touch would read what’s medically wrong with patients and read into their souls; and psychic readers, too.

BoyF himself was a healer and herbologist, an intellectual, a student of deep esoteric with the gift of healing hands. He left behind work that was institutionalized by the Department of Health in the Philippine Institute of Traditional and Alternative Health Care (PITAHC). Unfortunately, the DOH-PITAHC and TESDA today only train Hilot practitioners on the level of Hilot Wellness — which is like massage therapy to address the illnesses of our Physical Vehicle, our body. The practice without the depth of the spiritual value systems to address the psycho-Spiritual body, which I will call Vessel. It is also rare to find a traditional manghihilot who carries the spiritual values needed to be a true healer.

What’s the difference?

Understanding the distinct difference between physical body (Vehicle) and the psycho-spiritual body (Vessel) makes us also choose and understand the modalities of treatment: when we look at curing only our physical body ailments, we turn to medicines, standardized protocols and the pharma industry with drugs and surgery for more acute and emergency situations. Alternative or holistic preventive medicine emphasizes how our body can heal using remedies from nature’s herbs and lifestyle changes, treating the root of illnesses while looking at our psychical, emotional and spiritual well-beings.

Our physical body, if we parallel this to a Formula-One race car, needs the correct nutrients, food and lifestyle choices. We tune this up as we need this Vehicle as a means of transport, designed to navigate the material world and interact with people. Spiritually, the body is a vehicle that serves as a temporary instrument for the soul’s journey through life. So we better think about the kind of fuel we put into our bodies if we want it to run strong and long. Think of all the chemically-packed junk food with no nutrients, too much alcohol, smoking and stressful lifestyle that deprive us of sleep; spaces that are polluted; and being with people charged with negative energy — all this will inevitably slow down or break our body.

We shift to Vessel when we can accept that our soul is like the driver of this physical body vehicle. The body is like a sacred container for divine energy, spiritual presence and consciousness. This concept is what the traditional and indigenous healers work with. While supporting the health of all bodily functions, they also work on the astral, emotional, mental and spiritual levels.

In Yoga, they call these the koshas, the sheaths that energetically interact with the world unseen (of energy, frequencies and even the unseen beings that are present there). This is why there are so many traditional healing forms from many cultures such as TCM/Chinese medicine (with acupuncture, cupping, Qi Gong and Yin-Yang balance) to regulate the Qi or life force; Indian Ayurvedic Indian treatments with herbs, food and panchakarma detox to regulate the doshas (energies); Shamanism, Bush (Australian Aboriginal), Maori (New Zealand) and African Medicine with smoke, drumming, sacred plant medicines, herbs, chants and dreamwork; Curanderismo (Latin America) with Catholic prayers, limpia cleanses and energy work; and Unani Tibb ( Persian/ Arab world) with plant medicines, herbs and diet. Include here also the more contemporary methods of reiki and pranic energy healing, sound and light frequency. In the Philippines, we have the traditional Banahaw Hilot.

I am not speaking here of the albularios (folk medicine doctors with their orasyons and rituals), but of the Traditional Spiritual Healers who have found their way to Banahaw. All these modalities I mentioned are there to balance both the driver (the spiritual occupant) and the car (body) together with the objective of facilitating the drive with ease for the purpose of the destination (or the soul’s purpose).

How we fared from hilot

So my partner Carlos and I agreed to do the seven-day treatment when Mother Mary Flor, a member of the Missionary of the Divine Healer when she unexpectedly called out to Carlos to prevent an aneurism. She read all his symptoms exactly (things we both knew but did not tell her), even identifying pain from an injury he had been carrying for 15 years.

Meanwhile, I went for the experience to see if there was anything more that could be done with my asthma, heart and sciatica. We were not disappointed. Mother Mary Flor, who holds two master’s degrees and a PHD, is also a certified traditional hilot practitioner under Pinoy Hilot and CHP-019-700 under PITAHC.

Mother Mary Flor tackles physical diseases such as cancer, respiration, digestive and other diseases, but this also includes releasing ancestral curses, elemental habitation (sakay and karga), releasing lingering spirits of deceased persons and relatives, as well as kulam. She talks about spirits that ride on us, even if some are not bad; the mere fact they are riding on us is itself something that needs to be cleaned.

She has her way of finding out the root cause of the illness or spirit afflictions (usog). Her treatments also tackle mental health such as depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts. She uses heat therapy, powerful deep hilot, medical intuition and, in my opinion, is truly guided.

Her main philosophy is that the Divine Healer is within each of us, and that we each are our own healer. For our hilot, she called on the Christ light and coaxes out spiritual entities/illnesses while awakening the electromagnetic flow of the body. Through intense hilot manipulation, she unblocked arteries, broke down adhesions and knots, and focused on the really deep muscles and connective tissues.

Well, it was a truly powerful cleanse, and a real reset for Carlos and myself. Not only do we feel fantastic physically, but there was a deep spiritual clarity and focus that we also took home. More dramatic was that of Carlos, whose shoulder injury of 15 years is gone, the big scary bulge on his head almost gone, his lazy eyelid straightened out, the enlarged neck arteries all pointing to heart issues gone, and he snores less!

As of this writing, two friends of ours are undergoing treatment and so far are very happy with their results.

As our world shifts to a higher frequency, let us be more open to ways of dealing with illness and disease. They come as wake-up calls. Let us cure our physical ailments not from just the symptoms but from the root causes, often lodged in our emotions, our mental states and our karmic connections. Work on yourself as Vessel and not just Vehicle!