PUHPOWEE! Fungal Thinking-Embodied Futures
- Eleni Danesi
- May 22
- 3 min read
By Eleni Danesi | Multiscapes LAB & BODYMIND Architecture
“Puhpowee” — the force that causes mushrooms to push up from the earth overnight.
A word from the Potawatomi language. A moment that changed everything.
Listening Beyond the Human
In 2022, I found myself working on a research thread titled Embodied Democracies. It emerged from a simple but layered question:What if democracy wasn’t just a system—but a sensation?A lived, relational experience that goes beyond institutional frameworks, rooted instead in how we listen, respond, and coexist.
This inquiry gradually expanded beyond human-centered structures. I became increasingly curious about how we might design more inclusive, multispecies ways of living and deciding together. I asked myself:
How could other forms of life be acknowledged in the way we think, act, and make decisions on this planet?
The Word That Sprouted a Universe
To explore this, I began living more consciously with plants—not just as decoration or metaphor, but as companions. I documented my daily interactions with them, including the emotional complexities involved: the satisfaction when they thrived, the guilt when I failed to understand their needs. One plant in particular—a large Alocasia—taught me a lot through its quiet presence and expressive form.
Around this time, I came across Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, and I encountered a word that stayed with me:Puhpowee— a word used by The Potawatomi Nation-a Native American tribe of the Great Plains, upper Mississippi River and Western Great Lakes region, to describe the “unseen energies that animate everything” and that this word could be used, for example, to describe the force that propels a mushroom out of the ground! I loved the word and, in general, the musicality and sensitivity that the language of Potawatomi showed.
In the next days, a mushroom appeared in the soil of my Alocasia’s pot overnight. It felt like a small but meaningful encounter with something I had only just begun to notice. Ever since I use the word Puhpowee, when I feel this push forward, the motivation that comes when we feel aligned, in congruence with our thoughts and emotions, when we feel a sense of deep connection with the creative process, even when the path is not yet clear and might never be.
Fungal Thinking, Embodied Futures
Since that moment, mycelium has become a teacher.A metaphor.A model for living systems.
What if decision-making wasn’t top-down but rhizomatic?
What if leadership meant sensing, feeding, retreating, and returning?
What if the most intelligent structures are invisible—underground, collective, and nourished by decay?
This way of thinking resonates deeply with my work through BODYMIND Architecture, where we explore how spaces, systems, and somatic awareness shape our individual and collective wellbeing. It also aligns with Multiscapes LAB, where we prototype multispecies, eco-social futures that challenge anthropocentric logic.
Fungi don’t dominate. They collaborate.
They don’t hoard. They share.
They don’t rush. They emerge, when the time and conditions are right.
The Oracle That Found Me
Years after that mushroom moment, the fungi found me again—this time in the form of a beautiful oracle deck:
🕸️ Let’s Become Fungal! by Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodríguez, illustrated by Rommy González and designed by Andrea Pompa Spikker.
This deck is a philosophical toolkit, a methodology for transformation, and a portal to fungal thinking.
It is not just about mushrooms. It’s about reimagining care, power, resistance, emergence, and healing through the lens of fungal life. It’s about composting the narratives that no longer serve and cultivating a new ecology of mind and matter.
Book and Oracle Cards, by Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodríguez, Beech mushrooms bought by me ;-)
What Comes Next?
As I continue developing upcoming offerings at Multiscapes LAB and within the BODYMIND Architecture Training, the Let’s Become Fungal! deck will become part of the journey.
It’s not just a set of cards—it’s a thought framework that complements the way I approach embodied learning, spatial intelligence, and relational design. Its prompts and metaphors will support group explorations, offer reflective entry points, and encourage more-than-human ways of thinking and creating together.
Incorporating fungal perspectives into my facilitation practice feels natural and timely.
These teachings offer a grounded way to explore concepts like decentralization, emergence, reciprocity, and interdependence—values at the heart of both Multiscapes and BODYMIND Architecture.
Over the next year, I look forward to integrating this approach across workshops, mentoring programs, and collaborative spaces—starting small, sensing what wants to grow, and following the connections that form.
Let's inteweave our more-than-human SP[ae]C(i)ES (species/spaces) in togetherness
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