HOOK SUSPENSION

Luna’s statement about hook suspensions:

We should first acknowledge that flesh suspension is an ancestral practice documented in the rituals of many different tribes of North America as well as Hindu traditions which survive to this day. Many of these traditions were violently interrupted and outlawed by colonial strategies intended to erase indigenous cultural identities. We are not engaging in any reductive or imitative practices which remove spiritual techniques from the cultural context tying closed practices to their cultural heritage and environment. Cultural misappropriation is not welcome in this space. 

Although the modern practice of hook suspension was inspired by these practices, we have made a great effort over the years to disentangle the community from this problematic initiation. The practice over the last several decades has been greatly focused on the technical knowledge required to lift people into the air with modern equipment as well as medical knowledge which informs our use of sterile piercing implements and their appropriate use. 

My involvement in hook suspension began in 2011 and was very intentionally a spiritual journey that I constructed for myself in order to reconnect with my indigenous ancestry. I learned from a very early age that  bloodletting could be seen as a means to practice reciprocity with Pacha, an Andean concept of time/space, also understood to be “Pachamama” meaning Mother Earth. I document my spiritual practice in collaboration with many great artists in fine art photography and currently as a hook suspension artist for theater and performance art as my second career.

As a professional body piercer since 2007 I have been able to combine my spiritual intentions with a modern focus on safety and up to date sterilization practices. I am lovingly involved with the greater Suspension community all over the world and forward the belief that this can be a deeply connective practice whether to oneself or to the people and the environments surrounding us. I would like to collaborate with anyone interested in pursuing this journey in whatever way feels authentic to each individual person seeking to know themselves in their true strength. My practice is not prescriptive and I am not interested in being the architect to anyone else’s journey. I am offering my experience in the fields of safe and sterile piercing, Art, and as a suspendee in service to your vision.