Center for Babaylan Studies

10/28/2026

Are you ready to answer Ate ’s call to court your indigenous soul? Join us for Pagsuyo 3.1. Links in bio to learn more

10/21/2026

If you’re interested in continuing these discoveries together, we urge you to join us for Pagsuyo 3.1: bit.ly/pagsuyo27

This is a monthly exploration focused on ethnoautobiography, and a kapwa journey of collective healing. Early bird registration ends on October 31. To learn more, we invite you to the Info Session About Pagsuyo 3.1 on Sunday, October 25 from 2 pm Pacific / 5 pm Eastern.

10/21/2026

🏝️As Ate Leny said, we shall do: we will continue “to be open to the invitation of our indigenous soul.” It was so wonderful to gather together to discuss our shared connections by way of Forgotten Island. There is great beauty and learning when we’re all able to meet to dig deeper into our roots. Thank you so much for sharing your time with us, and special thanks to Ate Leny, Ate Lily, Ate Maileen, Ate Justine, Nick, Sobey, Aliza Carmella, and Danielle for offering insight and drawing connections to our ethnoautobiography!

10/08/2026

🏝️Bid on exclusive Forgotten Island keepsakes to sustain the Center for Babaylan Studies! Learn more: https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/tfi-discussion-auction-for-forgotten-island-merch

Up for bid is a limited collection of official Forgotten Island promo. To give everyone the best experience, we’ve bundled these collectibles into three themed Kits:

🏝️The Adventure Kit – Outdoor gear featuring a Forgotten Island drawstring backpack and sun visor.

🏝️The Everyday Kit – Featuring 2 youth large sized t-shirts, planner and foldable tote.

🏝️The Creative Kit – Featuring a friendship bracelet and 3 coloring/activity sheets.

All proceeds from the auction will go toward CfBS programs. Many thanks to a kind Kapwa, a Filipino content creator, for their generous donation of Forgotten Island keepsakes to CfBS.

08/23/2026

💌 Mahal na Kapwa: We invite you to join us on September 11 for Ka Leny Strobel's birthday gathering on Zoom. Please RSVP through this link and share your love for Ka Leny: http://bit.ly/26HBD-KaLeny

Our beloved elder has dedicated her birthday fundraiser for CfBS on FB for years. And this year, we will gather virtually to wish Ka Leny a happy birthday, then watch the episode of "The Filipino Story" that focused on Ka Leny's work and legacy that continue to inspire generations of Filipinos/Pinoys in the diaspora.

Ka Leny's teachings and writings have inspired many of us who are seeking ways to heal from colonial trauma, unravel from the grip of cosmopolitanism, and extend Kapwa consciousness to all beings, especially the land.

Any gift — whether it's $5 or $25 — would be greatly appreciated. Your offering will help sustain the work of CfBS in creating spaces for learning and community for Filipinos in the diaspora.

Even if you cannot give at this time, we still hope you can make it.

08/13/2026

Hear more, learn more, dig deeper into writings of Ate Leny, Ate Lily, and Ate Justine - all leaders within the Center for Babaylan Studies. Maraming salamat for all of your support on this journey ☀️

Link to purchase on our Publications page: https://www.centerforbabaylanstudies.org/publications

Babaylan: Filipinos and the Call of the Indigenous - This collection of scholarly essays and personal narratives by decolonizing scholars, poets/writers, artists, culture-bearers, and activities, offer the wisdom and insights gleaned from their engagement with the Babaylan tradition and practice. The writers all share this belief: If we can articulate the Babaylan healing practice and Kapwa psychology as our intellectual, emotional, cultural, and spiritual capital — then we have much to offer to each other, to our communities and to the world. We offer these gifts to everyone ready to receive the call of the Indigenous.

Back From the Crocodile’s Belly - A celebration of the beauty, richness, and diversity of indigenous ways of being as revealed in the critical studies and creative performances of living native traditions in the Philippines and in the United States diaspora. Through the use of primary and secondary research, the re-reading of historical and cultural archives, and the articulation of silenced stories, the book seeks to open up space for an alternative discourse on indigenous knowledge that does not merely reproduce progressivist and social evolutionary paradigms that invariably position the Indigenous Subject as "primitive," "barbaric," and nothing more than a "quaint relic of the past."

Coming Full Circle - Coming Full Circle is about the healing of the Filipino colonized psyche through the recovery and re-imagination of Filipino identity and culture. It is about the emergence from the ‘culture of silence’ to critical consciousness that is able to develop new conceptualizations and frameworks about the Filipino American experience.

Mungan and Lola tells the story of the child Mungan who loves to make her Lola (grandma) smile. One day, Lola is inconsolably sad. Mungan and her family engage in Filipino rituals of care—cooking sabaw, performing hilot, and playing kulintang—to uncover the source of Lola’s sadness and find a way to bring back her smile.

All About My Lola - A companion journal to go with the Mungan and Lola book. Journal prompts help children (and grown-ups) gather and celebrate their lolas/grandmother’ stories, from childhood to elderhood.

Jack & Agyu (2020, 2024) tells the story of an imaginative young boy, Jack, who longs to find himself in the books that he reads. Crushed when he realizes he is different-looking from all his favorite book characters, he begins his adventure to right this wrong. His path leads him to trouble, but also to healing and empowerment as he reconnects with the stories of his ancestors from the Philippines.

Mama, Mama, Do You Know What I Like? - This book provides a peek into the daily life of a five year old Filipino-American boy named Charlie, who goes on a picnic with his Mama and younger brother, Jack. Beautifully illustrated by Andrew Rogers, Charlie shares what he likes and likes to do, all of which most kids his age can relate to!

08/08/2026

Repost - Maraming salamat for featuring Ate Leny! • Dr. Leny Strobel () is a Filipino American scholar and author who has dedicated much of her career to helping Filipinos in the diaspora rediscover their cultural identity.

She fittingly calls this the “Born-Again Filipino” experience, a journey of reconnecting with a part of ourselves we may have lost touch with, or perhaps never had the chance to know at all. Through history, culture, and indigenous Filipino ways of knowing, Dr. Leny invites us to rediscover what it means to be Filipino.

Join our virtual Watch Party for our newest Culture Bearers feature on Dr. Leny Strobel, and even get the chance to meet her and join the conversation yourself.

Comment “JOIN” to be part of our Bayani community and receive an invitation to our watch party!

August 7, 2026 at 5:00 PM PST | 7:00 PM CST | 8:00 PM EST
August 8, 2026 at 8:00 AM MNL

Bayanihan

06/22/2026

FREE Webinar with Ate Leny and Ate Lily on Monday, June 29! Register here: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/events/philosophies-of-the-south%3A-decolonizing-the-self%3A-learning-land%2C-unlearning-empire-

In this conversation, Leny Mendoza Strobel and S. Lily Mendoza reflect on their respective journeys from decolonial theory into Indigenous studies and practice. Drawing on their shared work with the Center for Babaylan Studies, a movement for decolonization and indigenization among diasporic Filipinx, they explore how reclaiming Indigenous knowledge systems, ancestral wisdom, and embodied practices can transform understandings of self, community, and belonging. The discussion considers how diasporic Filipinx and other communities grapple with histories of colonial dispossession, work toward accountability to the land (and those land’s original peoples) both in the homeland and in the diaspora, re-learn Indigenous ways of knowing, and re-imagine futures grounded in relationality, wholeness, and collective care.

06/14/2026

✨Available now - Kapwa: The Self in the Other by Dr. Katrin de Guia - https://www.centerforbabaylanstudies.org/product-page/kapwa-the-self-in-the-other

Published in 2005, this book is the late Dr. Katrin de Guia's seminal work, featuring her groundbreaking research, which profoundly shaped the modern understanding of Sikolohiyang Pilipino (Filipino indigenous psychology). She was also recognized as the wife of Philippine National Artist Kidlat Tahimik. In her fieldwork alongside traditional healers, wisdom-keepers, and indigenous artists, de Guia illuminated kapwa as the definitive essence of Filipino personhood. She defined kapwa as a relational way of being where the self and the other are inextricably linked. This book is the result of her pioneering research into the unique worldviews and lifestyles of Filipino culture-bearer artists. It comprises narrative accounts, critical essays, and other writing in a variety of literary styles combined with theories and findings about Filipino psychology, cognitive science models, and chaos research, from which a profile of Filipino personhood emerges.

Salamat!

03/21/2026

Beloved Kapwa, if you can, pls. support our kapatid, Nathan in his quest to journey back to our ancestral homeland to join a Yuta gathering (Listening to the Land) this coming August. Every bit helps.

I am planning a journey to my ancestral homeland, a trip that holds deep… Nathan Kuan Salazar-Uhlmeyer needs your support for Journey to My Ancestral Homeland