Storywork
Storywork sessions engage somatic and earth-based ritual practices such as guided meditation, altar building, herbalism, and divination.
Storywork sessions can stand alone, provide foundation for a mythopoetic tattoo, or accompany a pre-channeled design.
There are two main containers for Storywork sessions: Creation Myth and Four Directions.
MythoPoetic Intuitive Tattoo
A two-part process of Storywork and Ceremonial Tattoo.
Informed by your myth unearthed in our Storywork session, I co-create a custom intuitive design with the help of your guides. 1-3 weeks later we hold a ceremonial tattoo session to enflesh your myth, accompanied by a custom herbal blend and poetic invocation.
“A person without a myth is a person without a home.”
Sharon Blackie, Medicine Stories
What are body-myths?
Stories are woven in our body. They may be generative and take the shape of ancestors, loved ones, and beyond human kin; some may perpetuate extraction or harm held as trauma, shame, and conflict; and others unearth as complex mycelial memories that span geography and generations.
In Storywork, we access these body-myths and offer curiosity, compassion, and paths to integration and re-negotiation.
*Note: This is not western therapy – this is an active-emergent anticolonial practice free of pathologization and intended for specific containers rather than ongoing support.
Common Storywork Threads
- Ancestral (re)connection, reconciliation, and ethno-autobiography
- Life path, transitions, and sources of reciprocal power
- Learning to be held, seen, and vulnerable
- Mixed-lineage and/or white-bodied reckoning and wholeness
- Queer/Trans embodiment
- Ecosensuality and erotics – embracing pleasure and desire
- Sacred grief and rage
- Love, compassion, and connection::kinship
what to expect
Each session is attuned to your unique somatic landscape based on our connection call, the season we are collectively in, and the container you choose. A custom herbal blend based on your intentions will always be present to witness and guide us.
Virtual options and accommodations available. Storywork can be held in one or multiple sessions depending on your desired depth and intentions.
Book a free connection call to explore how storywork can support you in your journey.
Storywork Containers
“Indigenous peoples are those who have creation stories, not colonization stories, about how [they] came to be in a particular place – indeed how [they] came to be a place”
Tuck and Yang, Decolonization is Not a Metaphor
Mula Sa Binhi: Creation Myth
What place are you?
Mula Sa Binhi (From the Seed) is a practice in ethno-autobiographical mythweaving to invoke your creation story through an ancestral and place-based lens. For non-indigenous folks, this is intended to be a gesture in an ongoing process of uncolonization, decolonization, and re-centering selfhood in the matrilineal womb.
In session we will thread your unique tapestry of ancestry, imagination, earth memory, cosmos, community, and dreams. We may explore chosen and genealogical ancestors, plantcestors, place-based and mixed lineages, grief and belonging.
Ethnoautobiography is the practice of re-membering connection to “ancestors, myths, nature, place, history, storytelling, spirituality, community, and dreams” to be whole and satiated against the backdrop of extractive culture that gorges through consumption to fill emptiness.
Manang Strobel, Back From the Crocodiles Belly
Four Directions: Generative Power
How do we disrupt systems of domination?
We reclaim our source of reciprocal, regenerative power.
The four directions are the origin of medicine stories across cultures and earth-based practices. They connect us to the elements and help re-orient and nourish us amidst forces of oppression and separation.
In session we will:
–attune to the rhythms of the season we are in
–explore which direction(s) are calling to partner with you in this season of your life
–give reverence to the medicine stories and directional relations of your lineage and the Indigenous land we’re on
energy exchange
Single/initiatory Storywork Session
$111-144
75-minute storywork session. In-person or virtual. Can be paired with a custom tattoo or pre-channeled design.
Ongoing Storywork sessions
$77-111
After an initial session, book ongoing 50-minute sessions to continue to unearth and integrate. You will be given this booking form after an initial session.
Storywork + Mythopoetic Tatu
Starts at $555
Includes a 75-minute storywork session and half-day (3.5 hours) of tattoo ceremony. After half-day, tattoo is $100-150/hr sliding scale.
✦ color: i enjoy working with black, blue, brown, and red ink. review my love letter to melanated kapwatids.
✦ method: i am primarily a handpoke artist and create designs with this in mind. each poke is portal of intention and feels more aligned with ancestral practice. machine or mixed methods may be available depending on the piece, intentions, placement, and size. we can discuss method further in a connection call.
Explore Ceremonial Tattoo and Storywork containers best aligned with your intentions.
View completed tattoos and ceremony testimonials from beloveds ❤
Explore designs channeled with reverence to creative spirits, ready to be awakened 🙂
Storywork is a weaving of practices from my engagement in Embodied Social Justice (Transformative Programs 9-month cohort, 2022), LAKAPATI Herbalism and Ancient Somatics (2023-2024), Transformative Justice organizing, 5 years experience in abolitionist mental health work and crisis intervention, plantcestral poetics, and ancestral and collective murmurations. Please see reciprocity to learn more about my rhizome of mentors, containers, and co-liberators.
luya entangled 