values, phrases, and seeds that guide my practice. words emerging…
Rhizomatic reciprocity
Herbal Accomplices
Mythic Embodiment
Entanglement
Plantcestral poetics
Generative power
Unconditional Love
The Rhizome has Many Names
Honoring the rhizome
Teachers, Mentors, Co-Liberators – naming a few of the soils that shape Luya Entangled
Broadly: Embodied Social Justice, Wise One herbal tradition, Community and Ceremonial Tattoo practitioners, Plantcestors, Transcestors, Ancestors, Kin in earth-based and healing practices, Black and Indigenous knowledge-keepers, Abolitionists and Speculative fiction/future creators, Transformative and Loving Justice, Dreamscapes and Soilspace. Specificity here.
Rhizomatic reciprocity
We are the stories of many before us, around us, and those to come.
Ginger, like other influential herbs native to austronesia such as tumeric and galangal, is a rhizome. Rhizomes are the part of a plant-body akin to roots, who swim sidelong through soil and store the majority of their offerings underground. The rhizome has nodes, at times sprouting stem-like limbs to taste the sun and sky. Rhizomes can be broken off at the nodes and re-planted, in another place, across another time. These whole parts carry stories from the lands they have immersed in – plant, fungi, animal, and more-than-human creatures. The rhizome has no beginning and no end. They receive, nourish, grow, break apart, and become all the while.
Rhizomatic reciprocity is a way of engaging that disrupts hierarchical, individual, binary, and linear being. Like the filipino concept of Kapwa, rhizomatic being is not just seeing the self in the other, it is dissolving the boundaries between self and other. When we recognize that we are not bound to the stories of the container we are planted, we can break apart, trusting we will be held by community, to root in soils old and new that honor generative relationship to land, self, and one another.
Storywork, ritual, and ceremonial tatu are ancient and ancestral, and kept alive by knowledge-keepers most impacted by oppression. The interlocking illusions of power are dismantled when we intertwine with one another – nourishment passed back and forth in soil – dancing in a forest of unconditional love.
Offerings are sliding scale in solidarity with economic justice. The more folks access the at-cost and higher end of the scale, the more I am resourced to offer free community offerings and more accessible pricing for kin who are Black, Indigenous, trans, disabled, sex workers, and at these intersections.
herbal accomplices
“An ally loves you from a distance. An accomplice loves you up close” (DeRay Mckesson, On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope).
Plants are not passive. I’ve seen sowthistle emerge from impossible gaps in concrete and burs cling to fur and fabric for miles until their destination. I’ve witnessed nettles protectively surround olive groves on Turtle Island while genocide takes place on the other side of the earth. I’ve heard herbs not just whisper soothing reassurances but shout soul-shaking revelations. Plants, like our human kin most impacted by idealogical, institutional, interpersonal, and internalized oppression (I’s of oppression), are asking more of us:
How can we create sustainable, long-term entanglement with ways of being that actively disrupt supremacy and actualize collective liberation?
And the beautiful thing is, when we engage with them deeply and reciprocally, they have an abundance of answers and avenues to co-conspiratorship.
Mythic Embodiment
“A person without a myth is a person without a home” (Sharon Blackie, Medicine Stories).
“Mythweaving is the act of moving back and forth…the story emanating from the deepest sanctum of meaning, like the ocean’s message of emergence from darkness into light, from uncertainty to clarity…the process is one where I continuously plait and mesh life experiences into an endless creative search for substance and purpose. It is a quest that mirrors those of others, those of my ancestors, and the unfolding of the great beyond” (Ate Anguluan-Coger, Back from the Crocodile’s Belly).
Mythic embodiment weaves the self in the context of community, culture, history, dreams, and the more-than-human world.
entanglement
Entanglement is place-based.
Entanglement spans time by acknowledging the presence of the past and the future. Right now we have access to the trauma and resilience of our ancestors; the vision of liberated future.
Entanglement honors complexity.
Much of the work happens in the unseen, in the depths, in the shadows. The earth knows. The body knows. This is always enough.
Plantcestral poetics
“Plantcestors are embodiments of the places I have been blessed to visit, carriers of their stories, agents of medicine and of memory that extends beyond this earth” (Layla K. Feghali, riverroseremembrance).
“How does knowledge intersect with intuition, sensation and emotion to shape writings about plants? How might poetry trouble the dominant perceptions of flora as beautiful objects, pleasing scenery or exploitable resources? How can we learn to approach the biosphere from an emplanted perspective—one recognising plant wisdom—rather than consigning the botanical to the background?” (Charles Ryan, Plumwood Mountain Journal).
Generative power
In physics, one of the languages of the universe, Power is Work(energy)/Time, or the force to move an object at speed in a direction (velocity).
Energetic potential exists in all matter, and thus our bodies and the land (resources) are our greatest sources of power. Our actions, words, intentions, and interactions with resources, move energy and express power. Thus, power is the applied intention of energy.
Power does not exist in a vacuum; it must consider the systems that extract energy and horde power – white supremacy, the patriarchy, and settler colonialism.
Generative power can be created by reciprocal relationships (energy exchange) with the earth and one another.
The power we hold alone is not enough to actualize liberation; collective engagement in reciprocity builds generative power for alchemical transmutation – the process of change necessary to create new paradigms (White, Poetry as Spellcasting).
unconditional love
Inspired by the works of bell hooks and Kai Cheng Thom, love is energy actively applied to nurture one’s spirit.
Love is generative. Love is empowering.
Love is fluid and transformative. It honors change and shifting needs of the individual and collective.
Love is the breath dancing in our lungs, roots cupping the souls of our feet, and kin showing up for community care.
Love is a choice we can always return to.
The Rhizome has Many Names
Containers: Lakapati School of Herbalism and Ancient Somatics, Embodied Social Justice and White-Bodied Training – Transformative Programs, , Revolutionary Grower’s Garden
Teachers: Angel Kyodo Williams, Susanna Baratak, Stacy K. Haines, Akweke Emezi, Octavia e. Butler, Autumn and adrienne maree brown, Kai Cheng Thom, Alok V. Mennon, Center for Babaylan Studies, Manang Leny Strobel, Babaylan Dayang Guro, Babay L. Angeles, Grace Abiera, dayze dream, The Rooted Zodiac, Khokhoi of Kalami Spirit Arts, J.L. Umipig.
Poetics: I Hope We Choose Love, Poetry As Spellcasting, The Way of the Ancient Healer, Back from The Crocodile’s Belly, Filipino Tattoos, Pleasure Activism, Narrative Medicine, The Land in Our Bones, For the Wild, My Grandmother’s Hands, The Flowering Wand: Rewilding Sacred Masculinity
luya entangled 