From the start of this Pandemic of Covid 19, all medical and even the para medical community are working as one in finding cure to stop the spread of covid 19 all over the world. And different countries have their own local version of preventive medicine so that they will not catch the infection of Covid 19. Here in the Philippines as early as March 2020, there is a local Filipino Traditional Medicine that becomes trending on Social Media that been practiced by Filipino to counter act and protect them from the effect of Covid 19 and that is Suob.
Last week I receive a call from the production research team of Kapuso Mo Jessica Soho which is a TV show of GMA 7 asking me some information about the effectiveness of Suob. And the video that you will see below is the full segment that talks about the topic we are sharing now.
Though at the beginning of this video we can see a tragedy has been presented in performing suob as an infant has been accidentally burned by a boiling water in doing suob. Before we discuss here the efficacy and benefits of Suob as a Traditional Filipino Healing modality, i want to give you a heads up in practicing safety as well.
In this traditional method of affecting cure, we are invoking the element of fire to produce heat in our body. So like in how we treat fire, we should handle this element with care as it might burn us and be injured. When we work with Fire, we should observe safety distance to it as it may give benefit to us or the worst is that it can injure us. Fire produces light as well as heat. It can directly affect our sense of sight as well as our sense of touch. When it affect our sense of sight, it provides us light to see the colors and beauty of the world; and as it affect the sense of touch, we can feel its temperature and will give us also a clear sense of identifying what is rough, smooth, soft and hard as it can activates our nerve endings to determine those things.
In performing our Traditional Suob, i have to remind everyone that we have two types. The first one is the Dry Suob and the other one is the Wet Suob. These two types of Suob has its own prescription to it self. This mean that both type of suob has different healing effect depending on the illness that you have. This matter has been discussed when you take our Hilot ng Aghamang Binabaylan Training Course here at Hilot Academy.
So in doing suob, the safe distance that need to observe between the skin and the fire should be 1 meter or 3 feet away. Of course when i say Fire i don’t meant it to be a burning flame. What i only mean is just an ember flame such as putting a charcoal in fire but it is not flaming.
Wood Ember 
Stone Ember
On using wood ember to create a fume or vapor, we put fresh pounded healing herbs on it. Putting dry leaves on the ember will create big fire as it fuels and this will be dangerous as it will burn you. The purpose of our Suob Palina is to employ the fume or vapor to do their job in healing and the burning coal and fire is only an agent so that we may extract the healing properties of herbs that we need in healing. It is not also advised to place on fire medicinal oil such as the one commercially produced as it use Mineral Oil which is highly flammable or even herbal healing oil that is made with natural organic nutritive oil. On stone ember, you sprinkle it with herbal infused water or tea to create vapor. Remember in doing this you have to observe 3 feet distance to the fire as it may burn you. The only thing that you need in this treatment is the vapor or fume and not the fire it self.
This is the same when you apply Wet suob. You boil water with incorporating healing herbs. Turn off the fire and place the cauldron of boiled herbs under the chair and sit down cover your self with a blanket as the vapor rise to your body and make you sweat. In doing steam inhalation, you place the basin of boiled healing herbs on a table, open an umbrella and place a blanket over it so that you may inhale safely the vapor. With this i will make a video on how to do this steam inhalation suob for proper guidance of the Public.
Hilot Academy of Binabaylan 