Dayang Amiray
Hilot Foundations: Understanding Pilay and Banana Leaf Scanning
Rev. Dayang Amiray, also known as Marlena Lapuz Stevenson, is a medium, writer, doula, and ritual ceramic artist based on unceded Ohlone lands in the Bay Area. She carries ancestral ties to the peoples of Pampanga, Ilocos Norte and Sur, and Negros, and continues the healing traditions passed down through her maternal lineage. Her work as a hilot binabaylan centers on remembering and reclaiming Filipino ancestral practices through spirit-led healing, bodywork, and ritual. She is guided by her commitment to cultural work, reproductive justice, and the deep wisdom of the body and land. She brings over a fifteen years of community-centered work across healing, art, and advocacy spaces, and is devoted to making ancestral knowledge accessible and alive for diasporic and intergenerational healing. She is also a mother to 8-year-old twins, whose presence and light continues to shape her relationship to time, ritual, and responsibility.