Multicultural Healing
Hilot Healing Tradition
Traditional Pilipino Healing
Hilot Healing Tradition
An (in training) clinical practictioners insight on Pilipino traditional healing and how it can be helpful for practitioners working with Pilipino communities.
Hello and welcome to this page! My name is Mandy Lucas and I am currently a graduate student in the Community Based Block Program (CBB) at San Diego State University working towards my M.S. in Counseling and License Professional Clinical Counselor (LPCC) degrees.
As part of our program we were to create a project on multicultural forms of healing that may not be considered in mainstream Western therapy here in the United States. As a person who identifies as Pinay and Chicana (Filipino and Mexican American), I could not help but think about the multiple cultural forms of healing I grew up with. Thus this project allowed me to do some introspective work to look into the practices and traditions that helped raise me, my family, my community, and my ancestors.
In traditional Pilipino culture, it is said that healers come from a long lineage of healers, that the gifts and talents of healing are passed down through the descendants of the healers. It is no wonder that I've found my home in mental health and my sole purpose has been to help others heal. My "Lila" (my paternal grandma pictured to the left) was a healer, for which I only recently learned was called "Hilot Healing." My Lila, Maria Guzman Lucas, was known in her "barrio" (neighborhood) in Bana, Ilocos Norte, Philippines as an hilot (healer) and partera (midwife). When she eventually came to the U.S. in the early 1980's she continued healing our family and close family friends before her passing in 1998 at the age of 84.
Her traditional practices as an hilot and partera are extremely personal because I may not be here without this form of healing. My parents have told me without the healing powers of my Lila, I probably wouldn't have been born. After the birth of my two oldest siblings, my mother miscarried and was experiencing complications, as well as distress, from not being able to conceive again. When my parents told my Lila, she knew exactly what had to be done. She used her gift to understand what my mother was going through and used hilot practices so that my mother could conceive again. Shortly after, my brother Jason was born, followed by me five years later. In my parents and my eyes, my brother and I are miracles that came as a result of the healing powers of my Lila and her gift of healing.
Thus this website is a way of honoring my Lila and other hilot healers, in hopes that sharing knowledge of hilot healing could be helpful information to know for other practioners in the field working with the Pilipino community, especially with those who still practice traditional healing and practices.
Salamat! (Thank you!)