Receive Hilot

Hilot Binabaylan Hawaiʻi presents

Hilot Community Day

Traditional Indigenous Filipino Healing Arts

Saturday, October 17, 2026 · 10 am–2 pm
The Lawn at Pohakupuna · ʻEwa Beach, Oahu, Hawaii

Donation-based sessions. Appointments recommended; walk-ins are welcome as space allows, but a session cannot be guaranteed.


Recieve hilot

We invite you to experience Hilot during our Community Day. Complete the form below to request a session and select your preferred time. We’ll follow up by email to confirm your appointment.

Sessions are donation-based.

What is Hilot?

Hilot is an Indigenous Filipino healing tradition with many expressions, carried through families, communities, and generations.

Sometimes understood simply as Filipino massage, Hilot is much more expansive. It can include therapeutic touch and bodywork, traditional ways of assessing and understanding the body, plants and oils, prayer, ritual, intuitive listening, and other forms of care. How Hilot is practiced may vary depending on the practitioner, their teacher, their community, and the traditions passed to them.

At its heart, Hilot is relational.

It begins with listening. To the person in front of us. To the body and what it is communicating. To spirit, nature, community, our teachers, and those who came before us. Central to this is malasakit, a deep and genuine care for another person’s well-being.

Hilot is part of a much larger inheritance of Filipino ways of healing, understanding the body, relating to the natural and spiritual worlds, and caring for one another.

Like many Indigenous traditions, Hilot has lived through colonization, displacement, migration, and generations of cultural change. Some knowledge has been interrupted or lost. Some has remained quietly alive within families and communities. And some expressions of Hilot have been reduced to massage or separated from the cultural, spiritual, and relational ways of knowing that give the tradition its depth.

And still, Hilot is alive.

For us, authenticity does not mean placing Hilot behind glass or trying to recreate a Philippines of the past. It means knowing where our teachings come from, honoring our teachers and those who carried this knowledge before us, and practicing with humility and responsibility. It also means allowing Hilot to continue living, growing, and finding expression in our families and communities today.

There is joy in this. Joy in Filipinos reconnecting with traditions that may have felt distant or forgotten. Joy in practitioners finding one another. Joy in gathering again around ways of caring that have existed for generations.

We want people to encounter Hilot in its fullness and beauty. As healing and care. As relationship and responsibility. As ancestral knowledge and living practice.

Something received from those who came before us, cared for in the present, and carried forward for those who will come after us.

What to Expect

Hilot is personal and each practitioner works a little differently.

Your session will begin with conversation and assessment. Your practitioner will take time to listen to you and may observe the body, pulse, movement, energy, or other signs according to their training.

From there, your session may include bodywork, oils, plants, prayer, traditional or intuitive assessment, or other Hilot practices.

Some sessions may be quiet. Some may include conversation. Some may bring forward physical, emotional, or spiritual experiences. Please expect to stay approximately one hour for intake and receive a session.

There is no particular experience you need to have.

Come with curiosity and an openness to receive.

About Hilot Binabaylan Hawaiʻi

Hilot Binabaylan Hawaiʻi was created as a way to bring together our growing community of Hilot practitioners in Hawaiʻi.

It began with a simple intention: to create a space where practitioners can gather, stay connected, continue learning from one another, and share Hilot with the wider community with care, generosity, and integrity.

The name Hilot Binabaylan was created by our teacher Apu Adman for a new generation of manghihilot and Hilot practitioners. It honors the place of the Babaylan while giving this generation of practitioners a name of our own. We are students of Honolulu based Bahay Hilom who are guiding the way for traditional Filipino healing arts to be illuminated in Hawaii and the United States.

Hilot Binabaylan Hawaiʻi is a gathering place for connection, learning, practice, and service. We come together to deepen our practice, support one another, share what we are learning, and create opportunities for our communities to experience the depth and beauty of Hilot and authentic indigenous Filipino healing.

We grow together.

Our inaugural Community Day begins at The Lawn at Pohakupuna, a local Filipino family owned venue on Oʻahu opened to our community for this gathering. From here, we hope these gatherings will take many forms and happen in many places throughout Hawaiʻi.

This is a beginning. As practitioners, as a community, and as people carrying this work forward, we continue to learn from our teachers, from the tradition, and from one another. We hope to create more spaces for Hilot to be practiced, experienced, shared, and carried forward with care.

Our Hilot Binabaylan

Meet the Hilot Binabaylan offering care at our inaugural Community Day.

Practitioner introductions coming soon.

We grow together.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

  • No. Hilot comes from the Indigenous healing traditions of the Philippines, and we welcome people of all backgrounds to experience it with respect for the culture and tradition from which it comes.

  • Bodywork can be part of Hilot, but Hilot is much broader than massage. A practitioner may incorporate traditional assessment, therapeutic touch, oils, plants, prayer, ritual, intuitive practices, and other forms of care according to their training.

  • Wear comfortable, loose-fitting clothing that allows you to move and relax. Your practitioner will let you know if anything different is needed for your particular session.

  • Please be prepared to stay for about an hour.

  • Community Day is donation-based. Your donation helps support our practitioners and allows us to continue creating accessible community offerings.

  • Advance reservations are encouraged. Walk-ins may be welcomed as space allows, but sessions cannot be guaranteed without a reservation.

  • Hilot is a traditional healing practice and our Community Day offerings are intended to support well-being. They do not replace medical diagnosis, treatment, or care from a licensed healthcare professional.