What the Piko?

Eh, so what does Piko mean already? Like most Hawaiian words, Piko has lots of subtleties and meanings. Your piko is your bellybutton. Piko's are also, even more simply, holes--like if you got piko's in your clothes, you got holes, if you got piko's in your car, it's got lotsa saltwater holes or some kinda dings. In old times, and maybe some nowadays too, when a Hawaiian baby was born, the parents would cut the cord and put the dried up umbilicus in a small lava rock piko that the father would go and find. He'd put the umbilicus in the piko hole and cover it with a rock. Another use of the word "piko" is found in the center of a Hawaiian Quilt. Hawaiian quilts look something like this or like this. The center, or piko of the quilt,is thought of as the root and grounding point in the theme of the quilt. It's also a space that's thought of as a kind of portal. Bellybuttons-or piko's, they work the same way for Hawaiian Lomi-Lomi practitioners, by the way. Your piko, is your center. It is where you started to grow, and the dried up umbilicus is the first part of you to die. It is your connection to the world, and it is where you get your first wound. Hawaiians believe the soul is in the gut, and in Hawaiian Lomi-Lomi massage, healers are always rocking and sweeping into the center of the person they're working on, either to push together there, or to make space there by pushing tissue away from the center. They're also always looking to their center, taking energy from their root, and breathing into their belly as they work. In Lomi-lomi, as in Hula, your piko is where all your movements begin, and by breathing into it, and doing a little bit of hula movement as you work, the person's going to get the best manna energy possible, and you and your client are going to have the best connection.
So Piko is the best of all places for this blog to start, eh? E Komo Mai, and Welcome to this space!