Tattooing as Ceremony: An Integrative Experience
In nearly six years of tattooing, I’ve witnessed the range of reasons why people get tattoos: to assert identity, celebrate transformation, for fun, to honour grief, process breakups, to commemorate friendships and relationships, or reclaim agency through permanence.
Whilst getting a tattoo doesn’t and shouldn’t always have to have a deep meaning, I have been part of too many transformative conversations and heard “this is cheaper than therapy” too many times to ignore the fact that there is space to extend the tattooing experience. There seems to be a gap between the transformative power of a tattoo and the deeper desire for sustained, embodied change.
It is my understanding that tattoos can be an external mark for a desired internal shift, and I want to offer other tools to sustain the changes you feel or want to feel in a tattoo session over a longer period of time than just a one-off expansive day.
So what Is an Integrative Session?
Alongside tattooing, I am offering optional integrative sessions—before, after, or completely separate from the tattooing process. These sessions are rooted in my training as a somatic therapist, 700-hour certified yoga teacher and Ayurvedic therapist, and are fully tailored to what you need on the day.
Each session is a collaborative space where we use body-based practices to help you connect with your intention, process emotion, and integrate transformation over time.
This is not about fixing anything aspersay, rather about creating space to feel, connect with yourself, and integrate your tattoo as a meaningful experience. Think of it as grounding and expanding the tattoo experience—or standing on its own as a moment of connection and clarity.
What Might a Session Include?
Everything we do is based on your needs, interests and ultimately what you’re wanting to get out of the experience.
Some tools we might use include:
Breathwork to regulate or energize
Ayurvedic consultation for lifestyle support or daily rituals
Yoga tailored to your current needs and wants (e.g we could do a restorative yoga class pre tattoo, and come up with a 15 minute practice you could accessibly do every evening).
Somatic inquiry or guided reflection
Meditation, visualization or grounding practices
Emotional processing or nervous system support
We would never do all of the above in a session, but rather co-create a session based on what feels relevant and supportive for you.
After the session: Tools for Integration
The point of this is to not just have the session itself but to have tools to take with you. In our post- tattoo session you’ll receive personalized support to help you integrate the shifts from your session or tattoo into your daily life.
That could look like:
A custom 10-minute morning yoga flow
Ayurvedic practices specific to your constitution and needs
Grounding tools or reflection prompts
Practices that help you come back to your body in moments of stress, joy, or transition
Evening meditation practice.
The concept behind this is rather than just having your tattoo session as a one-off poignant shift (which is very powerful in an of itself), you will have some of the aforementioned tools to sustain and support yourself in the shifts you’re wanting to establish.
Why I’m Offering This
I believe that the body is the most powerful tool we have to understand ourselves and move through change.
This add-on to a tattoo isn’t for everyone nor does it have it be - this is simply an extra resource when needed to deepen the body-mind connection that is offered by the act of getting tattooed.
How you can work with me
You’re welcome to:
Book a tattoo session only, in a space that honours emotion and creativity
Book an integrative session only, without tattooing
Book the combination: before, after, or woven through a tattoo experience
Integrative sessions are booked with timing options (this is the time outside of tattooing so the pre and post session); 30minutes, 1hour, 90minutes, or full day.
Depending on the size of your piece the tattoo and integration may be split over several sessions. This will be confirmed beforehand, especially if allowing time for an intuitive tattoo.
You are welcome to book as many pre and post sessions as you want. It is entirely dependent on your needs and capacity.
For example:
• we could have 3 integrative sessions over 2 months, design your tattoo in this time, and 1 integrative session afterwards
• we could have 2 full days of integrative session, a day of tattooing, and a week break before our post integrative session.
The sky is the limit there is no right or wrong - what we do is centered around you and your needs.
The more time we have the more we can do. The 30minute session will only include somatic therapy as it does not allow time to safely get into yoga or ayurveda.
Lineage
The tools I offer in integrative sessions— meditation, yoga, ayurveda, and somatic practices—come from a range of traditions with deep cultural, historical, and spiritual roots. Yoga and ayurveda are Indigenous to India, and I recognize that they have often been misrepresented or commodified in the West.
I approach this work with care, humility, and a deep respect for where these practices come from.
To be very clear, I am offering suggestions from these modalities to accompany and enrich your tattoo experience, in the hopes that they will help you embody changes you wish for yourself, as well as be a gateway to deeper learning of ayurveda and yoga.
Ayurveda and yoga are two massive modalities that I am offering as a bridge for people, an introductory comprehension from which I can point them in directions to explore more deeply if they choose.
Thus my goal is in no way to extract or dilute these systems, but to instead facilitate an accessible entry point and supportive path that can take you into deeper growth and understanding.
My intention is always to honour the roots of these systems while staying within the scope of my training.
My background includes:
Over 700 hours of certified yoga teacher training, including trauma-informed approaches and meditation practices
Certified training as an Ayurvedic therapist, with a focus on lifestyle practices, daily routines (dinacharya), and constitutional support (doshas)
Ongoing education in somatic therapy and nervous system regulation
In all sessions, I aim to offer gentle guidance and reflection, not diagnosis or treatment. If you're interested in deepening your study or receiving more specialized care, I shall refer you to Ayurvedic doctors, Yoga schools, or further relevant resources.
What is Somatic Therapy?
Somatic therapy is a body-based approach to emotional processing and healing. “Soma” means the living, felt experience. In sessions, we bring attention to what’s happening in the body—beyond thought—and gently explore how emotion, sensation, and memory live in physical experience.
Again, this is about listening and allowing space for what is, rather than rushing to change or fix anything.
Whilst language is a sequenced component somatic therapy, it’s only one aspect of it. Some sessions may involve talking, others might involve movement, stillness, or guided inquiry. You’re always in control.
Somatic practice supports:
Increased self-awareness and emotional regulation
Greater access to choice, response, and embodiment
A stronger connection to pleasure, presence, and safety
Important note on touch:
Whilst some somatic therapists offer consensual touch in their sessions, in these there is no physical touch in somatic or Ayurvedic therapy sessions.
If we practice yoga, physical assists are entirely optional and always consent-based. Tattooing, by nature, involves touch—but the intention and care around this is always prioritized.
What is ayurvedic therapy?
Ayurveda is a traditional system of healing from India, dating back over 5,000 years. It offers tools for aligning your daily rhythms with your body’s unique constitution—supporting physical, emotional, and spiritual ease.
Ayurveda is considered the sister science to yoga, hence why both are being offered rather than just one.
“Ayur” means life, and “veda” means knowledge—so ayurveda is the knowledge of life. It recognizes that true health means being in balance: in the body, mind, senses, and soul. The word for health in ayurveda, svastha, means to be “established in the self.”
My ayurvedic training took place in Peru under Shyam Devi, focusing on lifestyle support, food, and daily rituals. I offer this as a starting point—accessible, actionable tools to support your balance and clarity. Ayurveda is incredible because like most true ways to support and balance your body, it does not claim any quick fixes, but is primarily composed of habitual lifestyle shifts that will have bountiful flow on effects in the long run.
What is yoga?
Yoga is the practice and philosophy of connection—of uniting the body, mind, and spirit with the infinite. The word comes from the Sanskrit "yuj," meaning to yoke or bind, and it signifies union: between the self and the divine, the mind and the heart, the finite and the infinite.
It has been widely appropriated in modern Western wellness culture, and I aim to honour its original depth and breadth through our sessions. Yoga is not originally psychotherapy, exercise, or sport—it is a sacred return to wholeness. It is involutionary in nature, a coming home to the power source already within, and evolutionary in its capacity to awaken consciousness. Yoga helps us reconnect to the present moment, to our vertical self (spiritual truth) and horizontal self (service and reciprocity within community).
On every level, yoga is a path of purification, integration, and awakening. Physically, it detoxifies and strengthens; mentally, it calms the fluctuations of the mind; and spiritually, it reconnects us to the universe, to the divine, and to our own highest self. It offers tools—from breathwork (pranayama), to ethical living (yamas/niyamas), to devotion and stillness—for cultivating presence and alignment. In its truest form, yoga is not a performance but a practice of remembering who we are and embodying that with humility, reverence, and love.
