Earth and Ancestors: Environmental Healing is Mental Health
Written by inabel Uytiepo (they/them/isuna)
Guest Writer, Non-Binary Chapter Member
Our Bodies are Our Ancestral Lands
malunggay plant
For those of us Filipinx not living with the Philippine islands, some of us might feel or have felt that we don’t have a close connection to our Mother Land. It can feel like not belonging, dispossession or even forever an outsider. For us, I offer another perspective. The very molecules of our flesh and the blood come from the elements of the Philippine islands. Even if our parents have traveled throughout the world to birth us on other lands.
The realms, relational movement and spiritual beingness of the islands were carried with them and are now shared with us in our own living being. The ocean and sea waters of the Pacific, South China, Celebes flow through the fluids in our bodies. The gold of Cordillera, Bicol, and the Butuan-Surigao along the Agusan River sparkle in our blood. The soil that held and fed the plants and animals that nourished our human ancestors, make up our skeletal system. When we eat malunggay our entire being awakens with recognition of our plant relatives. We might think that because we weren’t able to study with our Apong that we don’t carry the wisdom and the healing practices that our ancestors practiced.
I write to tell you that our ancestors whisper and dance curiosities into our thoughts, dreams, bodies and interests.
When I was 10 years old, I sat looking at my hands, unknowingly seeing them through the eyes of an unseen ancestor. They told me through a thought in my mind, my hands would be “important” one day. I dismissed this message for years. As a young adult, I worked for corporate companies, like my parents did and they praised me for it. My parents were both early adopters in the nascent days of the tech industry. During a difficult transition in my life, professional and personal conflicts pushed me away from office life and gifted me a sacred pause in what I now believe was divine intervention. I explored creative interests, giving me the opportunity to explore my curiosities. I thought I might return to a pursuit of performing arts because I had grown up an artsy theater kid. But from an early age, I was quietly fascinated with anatomy, biology and what the body teaches us through creativity and metaphysical adventures.
During this sacred pause, while taking a performing arts class, I quickly remembered why I stopped that pursuit. Half way through, I found out a healing arts school was offering an introductory night. I skipped the other class and went to the introductory class. I never felt so in my element meeting healing practitioners for the first time. I viscerally felt that they too had the same depth and curiosity of the human embodied experience. I went on to become a bodyworker and to avoid the stigma of being an Asian massage therapist, I specialized in chronic pain, reproductive and digestive health. 10 years after having a successful practice, my mother casually mentioned that my apong babae, grandmother, was manghihilot, traditional healer and that her sister was an agpaanak, midwife, in their village. She said that people would go to my Lola when they had an upset stomach or to her sister when they were to give birth. So in the end, even though I wasn’t able to study under my late grandmother’s guidance, my ancestors led me to teachers that would guide me to learn the practices that were of my maternal lineage. That whisper about my hands was right. Through this I was able to find my way to one of many journeys towards my body as my ancestral lands. I can feel my Lola so proud of me for finding my way to what my body already inherited about healing.
We also may think that because we are not living with the islands that the animals and plant relatives are not able to be in a healing relationship with us. In my 30s, when I was attempting to get pregnant, I had two miscarriages and one failed IVF attempt. My mother was unable to offer me the emotional support that I needed because pregnancy and birth were easeful, nearly effortless, for her and my father. With this grief, I happened to be working with a colleague who worked with flower essences. She did not know anything about my family ancestry, but she said the collection of Hawaiian plants in her wide collection of essences from around the world wanted to accompany her common essences to my session. When she did her flower essence reading of me, a significant number of the plants and animals that spoke up were from tropical islands like Hawaii and the Philippines: Monkeypod trees (Samanea saman), Peacock flower (Caesalpinia pulcherrima) and Whale. The messages that the essences shared were clearly acknowledging the ways that I had felt unseen, and this lead me to a deep healing in my relationship with my mother and rekindled a profound relationship with our mother of all mothers, Mother Earth. Even though I hadn’t noticed them in my time in the Philippines and Hawaii, they noticed me and wanted to be there to support me in my grief.
When we stay open to guidance, support and connection, we can experience healing and share healing in unexpected ways. Over the years, it has been important to me to connect with all the plants and animals of the Earth, for various ways of learning and experiencing our ancestral lands, through our own bodies.
Deepening my relationship to my body, as ancestral lands, began at a very young age.
My curiosities have led me to study metaphysics, Buddhist meditation, herbal medicine, bodywork and transpersonal journey work, with and beyond space and time. At the root of it all, this ancestral communication has deepened my creativity and strength to be whole in this world. Over the decades of learning many practices, I have developed a deep desire to share them, especially with all Pilipinx queer and nonbinary folks and all people of the global majority. I developed a series of healing practices that center the Earth’s seasons, rhythms and alchemical dance with the cosmos. For many seasons, I have offered Amourphous Pathways to provide beginner practices in preparation for ancestral wayfinding. I created a communal cohort called the Wesearch Journey for deeper ancestral wayfinding. Each season I share practices to navigate the various universal themes of the seasons of the Earth. For example in the Fall, some of the themes we explore together are death, dying and composting obstacles in our relationships through Somatic Forgiveness. Soon I will train more practitioners to facilitate these practices I have been learning with the support of countless teachers.
My work is inseparable from the co-creative support of the ancestral lands of my body and the surrounding lands that have raised me: the Philippine islands, Tongva land, Coast Miwok lands, the Kingdom of Hawaii and most recently Uypi lands. In order to continue to practice being in right relationship, I slowly have increased my tending to the native plants and animals on the lands where I live.
Although I am not able to tend to the external lands that my mother and father were raised on in the Philippines, I do feel it is important to be in an active relationship with the land that I occupy as a settler. I believe in working for the sovereignty of the indigenous people we live amongst, while maintaining an ongoing dialogue between all our Earth relatives. Breathing with and teaching me are the Coast Live Oaks, Redwood trees, the river, the deer and quail here in this coastal forest. I tend to Mother Earth by cleaning her polluted rivers, beaches, and offering baths to the native bees and birds. Each week, I host a space to feel deeply, including to grieve the violence we have wielded at her during Climate Circles.
Agyanamak unay to Grandmother Earth for supporting our work and all the living beings who we at Therpin*y are blessed to be, as Dr. T says, Kapwa building with. We don’t need to do this sacred tending alone, along with me there are several ancestral healer practitioners, like Jana Lynne umipig and Raynelle Rino in the Therapin*y Directory that are willing to hold space and nourish the hearts, bodies and minds of our ancestral lands, our bodies.
Ingat.
Please Join Us!
On April 19, 2026, Eddy M. Gana, LCSW (they/them) and inabel Uytiepo, CMT, CCHT (they/them) are hosting a half-day retreat called ““TRANScendence in Body and Poem,” for Non-Binary Pilipinx who identify as trans, bakla, queer, two-spirit, non-binary, fluid, genderqueer or beyond the binaries and are interested in becoming a potential member of Therapin*y. Sign up by April 17, 2026 with this link.
inabel Uytiepo, CCHT, CMT (they/them/isuna) is a fluid queer Ilocana, Ibanag and Gedang Pilipinx-Chinese transdisciplinary healing arts practitioner, teacher, facilitator and coach. inabel is a member of the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter and the Therapinxy Non-Binary Chapter - Please connect with inabel for sessions or training here on Therapin*y !