The Center for Babaylan Studies will organize a Babaylan Conference in 2010 to disseminate knowledge about Filipino Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Practices.
 
Rationale and Vision:
 
We believe in the power of the Indigenous Soul and the Indigenous World View, as embodied by primary Babaylans and contemporary Babaylan/culture-bearers, to provide a narrative that restores a sense of wholeness, beauty, and integrity to our pagkaPilipino/Pilipinoness. The Filipina Babaylan is a shamanic healer, herbalist, ritualist, and folk therapist who serves her community. In a world that aches for peace, justice, and healing from the violent effects of colonial and imperial histories, our Babaylan and our indigenous knowledge systems and practices offer a path to re-membering and remembering the sacredness, strength, beauty, and the creativity of our Filipino Loob/Sense of Being.
 
Those who have done the deep work of reconnecting with the spirit of the Babaylan would like to share this experience with our communities. We would like to reflect together and celebrate this wealth from our spiritual and cultural heritage so that it might nourish and nurture the work that we do to heal and bless, to make peace, to create justice, to teach our kin the values of Kapwa/The Self in the Other; Kagandahang Loob/Inner Beauty and Integrity; Pakikiramdam/Compassionate Sensing; and Panagtagbo/Unity.
 
In this gathering, we bring together:

1. key resource persons from the Philippines on Filipino Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Practices especially the Babaylan tradition;
2. Babaylan/culture-bearers in the U.S. whose life work is informed by the Babaylan tradition;
3. consciously Babaylan-inspired scholars;
4. babaylan-inspired artists, teachers, healers, warriors, priestesses, visionaries whose life work is centered around indigenizing the Filipino self;
5. persons who recognize decolonization as a spiritual path;
6. persons who consciously work on the integration of non-indigenous elements into Filipino religiosity and spirituality;
7. persons whose creative expressions include indigenous elements or resonances.

 
WHO WE ARE:
We have planned and organized the Center for Babaylan Studies in order to work with others, dedicated to the path of the babaylan, who might join us to bring you our first live event, the Babaylan Conference of 2010.
 
Director: Leny Strobel's bio  CLICK HERE
Co-Director: Perla Daly's bio CLICK HERE
Co-Director: Letecia Layson's bio CLICK HERE
Co-Director: Baylan Megino's bio CLICK HERE