Ancient ‘babaylan’ healing dance rediscovered

Part I

MANILA, Philippines—Babaylan is a Visayan term that means medicine man or woman, in other words, a shaman.

For American Indian and other cultures, a shaman is a respected member of a tribe who is not only a healer and priest but also an intermediary or channel between the living and the departed.

It was only after reading the article of Jeffrey Tupas in the Sept. 16, 2007, issue of Philippine Daily Inquirer that I learned of “inner dance” in connection with the babaylan’s healing practices.

I found the article very interesting but rather sketchy and incomplete. It left many questions unanswered. I was told Gilda Cordero-Fernando wrote earlier a much longer article on the same subject that unfortunately I had not read.

I was still looking for Gilda’s article when I received a call from Rosanna Escudero (a natural catalyst and magnet for esoteric things) that Pompet Villaraza, the person who rediscovered the lost healing inner dance of the babaylan, would be a guest in her condominium in San Juan. She asked if I wanted to meet him. I jumped at the opportunity. I sent text messages to several friends who, I thought, would be interested in the subject but only Celia (not her real name), a real estate broker and educator, made it.

Accidental

The story of how Pompet accidentally rediscovered the lost inner dance of the ancient Filipino babaylan was fascinating. It reminded me of the story of how Carlos Castañeda, an anthropologist at the University of California in Los Angeles, met the Mexican Yaqui Indian mystic and sorcerer Juan Matus, who became his teacher.

Like Castañeda, Villaraza was in California when, in 2002, he stumbled on a mysterious Mexican in San Gabriel mountain, who taught him everything he knew about working with the subtle energy in the human body.

The mysterious Mexican named Francisco knew everything about Villaraza’s background and, like Juan Matus, actually anticipated his ward’s coming.

Villaraza followed the Mexican wherever he went until, after walking for God knows how long, Francisco collapsed. How long he remained unconscious, Villaraza could not tell. But afterward, he was a changed person.

“For what felt like two hours (it could have been no more than 30 long minutes), I was moved to dance in a way I didn’t think was humanly possible,” Villaraza said.

“I felt powerful surges of electricity [and] I was trying to contain them, but the only way I could keep from exploding—I really thought then I would combust—was to keep screaming. I cannot describe the actual movement in words. I was doing somersaults, something I cannot do, as I twirled this stick that lay on the sand. And I found an intricate and powerful stick-fighting technique which, I was stunned to find, I had unknowingly mastered.

“I remember praying in thankfulness for experiencing an inner gracefulness... And when it was over, the perfect moment collapsed into this dead-tired 29-year-old man spread-eagled on the beach, staring at a clear blue sky that was as empty as the conscious mind.”

Time to come home

Then suddenly a spirit of a woman appeared and told him it was time for him to return to his native country. So he did as he was told.

He came back to the Philippines to look for a place the woman described to him. He found it in a small, uninhabited beach called Kalipay on an island in Palawan. He stayed there alone for two years. He abandoned his work, his family, his friends and everything else about the modern world.

He ate only what he could find on the island, mostly coconut, bananas and other fruits. He became as lean as the coconut trunk he learned to climb to survive.

He was told by his spirit guide to use the name Pi in Mindanao. But in Palawan he was known as Juan Lima.

What happened to him in Kalipay Beach he could not forget. For three nights he could not sleep. Then a voice spoke to him and said, “The Mother and I are now One.”

This is how Pi Villaraza described what happened after that.

“In an instant, I was a human puppet and strings were dragging me from the first-floor hammock to the second floor of my Robinson Crusoe-inspired beach house. Without my conscious say-so, I was lying on the mat and my throat began to make guttural noises, finally settling into a primal yet rhythmically enchanting melody.

“The voice again whispered, ’It began in Africa.’ After about 15 minutes of these chanting sounds, simultaneously my hands ended up automatically making percussive movements on my lap, chest, hips and the bamboo floor mats. My upper body swung upwards and I found myself facing the leaves of the bamboo shoots directly bent over my ‘Flower-of-Life’ vegetable garden.

“I wasn’t possessed by some external force. That much was crystal clear. This was the first time it happened to me. A year before this, I fasted on a ‘tree bed’ I made in central Palawan for a week-and-a-half and, for the duration, my hands kept twirling over my seven energy centers as if directed by an inner force I knew was coming from within.”

Source: http://showbizandstyle.inquirer.net/lifestyle/lifestyle/view/20080107-110929/Ancient-babaylan-healing-dance-rediscovered