ARUGA Sessions
Our sessions are deeply rooted in care, creating a unique intersection where bodywork, artistic expression, and well-being weave into one another. We gently hold space for this interconnectedness through intentional care circles, fostering an environment of mutual support and collective paths towards healing.
Within this nurturing atmosphere, creativity is given room to emerge organically, allowing participants to explore and express their ancestral memories and personal stories.
By integrating ritual, body-centered practices, and community connection, we hope to cultivate experiences that honor the wisdom and resilience of communities historically silenced, making space for stories that continue to shape our becoming.
Tatak ng mga Ninuno
Our tattoo practice is rooted in the understanding of the skin as a site of memory, ritual, and belonging. Handpoke tattooing is a way of marking the body with intention, carrying symbols that connect us to lineage, story and self.
Tattoos are offered as ritual: an act of remembrance, a gesture of becoming. This practice is part of our own ongoing study — informed by ancestral tattoo traditions of the archipelago, while recognizing that much knowledge was violently erased by colonialism. We hold this work with humility, offering it as a portal between the past, present and future: to honor what remains, and to allow ourselves to imagine what can still be.
Our Intentions
Based in the Filipino diaspora, our work is guided by reverence for the traditional healing arts of the archipelago. While we are studying under the guidance of practitioners in the homeland, we do not claim lineage or authority.
As we view this as a lifelong journey of study and return, we approach these practices with humility, curiosity and devotion. This explains why ARUGA is an offering: one where the body and spirit are honoured as teachers in their own right. Each session is made possible by the generosity of those who allow us to listen to their bodies and stories while marking their skin. We experience this as a profound honor and an important act towards (re)connection.
Bodywork
Our bodywork practice is not about “fixing” or “healing” from the outside, but about listening and allowing ourselves to return inwards.
The body is a living archive — holding tension, memory, silence, and story. Through somatic mapping, intuitive touch, and gentle guidance we create conditions for the body to speak in its own language: through pulse, breath, tension or stillness.
This intuitive work is influenced by Filipino traditional practices such as hilot and other forms of care. We approach them with deep respect, without claiming mastery.
We honor that we are (still) learning and evolving. What we offer is a space for co-witnessing, where you can meet yourself with tenderness, and where care is practiced as mutual, evolving and relational.
Evolving Practitioners
We name ourselves as evolving practitioners because we believe this work cannot be complete or “finished.” Just as tides shifting and the moon embodying her cycles, so too does the journey of care, memory, and creation. We remain in continuous study: With our teachers, ancestors, our own bodies, and with the communities we serve.
We also refrain from calling ourselves healers. We believe in the profound intelligence of the body and its ability to hold memory, to speak its own language, and to find pathways of repair. Our role is not to fix or cure, but to listen, to witness and to simply hold space.
Together, we are weaving together threads and remnants of the past, re-rooting what may have been displaced, and creating space for care as a collective, living act.
Rhythms of Exchange
ARUGA operates on a sliding scale rooted in care, reciprocity and trust.
This offering lives outside of rigid systems.
It is not priced to create profit, but to allow this practice to remain rooted, accessible and alive.