Informant Information 
Nationality: Filipino American 
Occupation: Teacher 
Residence: California
Date of Performance/Collection: Apr 23, 2022
Primary Language: English 

Background
My informant is my mentor who is Filipino and Hawaiian and during one of our phone conversations, we talked about Filipino folk medicine/massages.

Performance
S- We do a type of massage and it uses taping these two thin sticks, two tan sticks you held open the pores of the body so you tap it on to the skin of the body and so the person lays on their stomach with their back exposed and you would think someone’s whipping them with the sticks but what it’s actually doing is helping get the toxins to come to the surface like beating. There’s– there’s a guava oil that’s rubbed down your back in your legs and your back your neck and you lay out in the sun until it starts to open your pores, and then they tap you as if you’re playing a drum, up and down your back real thin sticks so it isn’t– it isn’t hitting hard, it’s more of a whipping the skin to bring the toxins to the surface other than fatty tissues and then all that guava that is put on you turns black, then you— then you go into a stream or river and wash it off but all that all the toxins in the body are brought up in the guava is the stabilizer in holds the toxins.

Thoughts
This massage reminds me of an ionic foot massage where a person places their feet in a footbath filled with water and a probe is placed in the water that draws out the toxins. After a little more research, I learned this massage is also done to treat children with stomach problems and soothe pregnant women. 

Spy, Pencil-circleSummer, et al. “What Is Lomi Lomi Massage?” What Is Lomi Lomi Massage? | Lomi Lomi | Good Spa Guide, 6 May 2016, https://goodspaguide.co.uk/features/lomi-lomi-massage.