by Kumu Nālani | Jan 20, 2023 | Blog Posts, Changing, Healing
EACH one of us has an important decision to make. One that we might make many times over, but each time we do, it becomes less of a decision and more of a necessity. We can decide to carry our burdens, or we can decide to heal them. You can to decide, as I do, one way or the other.
One way will lead to blockage and entanglement that keeps on turning back on itself. The other leads eventually to freedom to be in the flow of life as you encounter it second by second. That one takes real effort. It is longer. But, it is for life.
The first one will eventually exhaust you, frustrate you and erode you. And it will allow others to erode you too because your foundation that makes up the essential You isnʻt strong enough, unshakeable, impermeable. When our foundation is in place, when it is firm, we can let that which no longer serves us, and the barbs directed at us by those who operate from fear – because thatʻs whatʻs at the base of hatred, which is really self-hatred – move through and past us. We force it into run off.
Nature teaches us this Truth – take a look next time youʻre walking along a beach, natural waterway or forest. When we sat with this Ancestor, it showed us these two paths. Both paths have Pōhaku/ stones, which in our Lineage we refer to as “baggage”, but only one of them leads to Freedom…if we decide that we no longer want to be heavy and immoveable like a stone.
When we donʻt do the INNER WORK required to move ourselves out of entanglement, we become more snared within it. The entanglement keeps turning back on itself, pulling tighter and tighter until those knots are pulled so hard, you become immobile. Thatʻs when you really do get stuck because you feel you canʻt move in any direction. It feels like one big ball of messy knots.
BUT, when you find your path, the one that really means something to you, you learn how to do the inner work needed so you DONʻT get caught up with people, situations or memories of the Past. The Past is healed in the present. Thatʻs one of the things the Present is for. If the Past remains unhealed, you continue to live it in your present. You’re living your Past over and over again in all sorts of situations. Itʻs the Groundhog Day nobody wants. Do you get the lesson?
Finding YOUR path means starting. The path you start with and follow might not be the path you continue on, but it will do its job getting you started until you come to another path – and then itʻs simply another decision. Do I want to continue on this Path, explore and grow with it or is there another path that has shown itself to me BECAUSE I have walked this path and can more clearly see my way…
Not starting, but THINKING about it over and over again wondering what to do, IS the knots pulling tighter. The only way to loosen them is to start on a Path with a trusted Teacher to help you find your way.
I can show you the way we do it in our Lineage using our Teachings as the guide. You can walk this Path with me, learning and clearing your way as you go. And when we get to the end of our 6 – 8 weeks together, you can decide “YES, I want to continue on this Path” or “No, now I can see where I have to go next…”
Thatʻs how all this Spiritual stuff works – you just have to start. Let me help you find your way…Kumu Nālani x
Where do I go Kumu?
🌺 The Path to Pa’a is the Foundation Course that kicks everything off – whether it’s finding your way to your next Path or staying here awhile with me. We run it livestreamed – in a live online classroom – each quarter and sometimes as Retreats. Go to the Calendar to find when it’s on and either enrol in it now or get on the Interested List for next time. As always, if you have a question, find me here, i will always come back to you with an answer.
by Kumu Nālani | Oct 20, 2022 | Blog Posts, Healing
Feeling lost? Not sure where you’re going in life or how to get there? Carrying a sense of hard-to-explain unhappiness, feeling displaced? Hold on. It’s all part of finding the right Doorway…
All of those sensations of feeling displaced, yep, know ‘em well. In fact, it was those exact, hard to make sense of feelings that turned my own engine over, with just enough sputtering to kickstart the most important enquiries of my own life.
And many, many people who cross my path in healing sessions, talk story gatherings, courses and workshops all tell of that same inexplicable feeling of “wrongness” – out of step, out of place, out of belonging, not devastatingly unhappy but not high kicks happy either.
LOSTNESS.
Lostness isn’t a bad thing. The experience of it can be really disconcerting, destabilising, wobbly and frustrating leaving you future-fearful, but in the checks and balances, it isn’t a bad thing at all.
In fact, some might say it’s a necessary rite of passage that we have to come to grips with if we are going to “make it” up the mountain.
Lostness is part of our survival instinct. Ever been lost travelling overseas or even in your own neighbourhood shopping mall and couldn’t find the way out? The very first thing we all do is start looking for a way to solve the problem. We look for the way out. Our innate instinct is self-preservation. Our pule/prayers are all about “save me from…”, “show me how to get out of…”
THINK ABOUT IT FOR A MOMENT.
Lostness and spiritual survival are partners in Spiritual Revival. One is necessary so the other can survive, thrive and continue. That’s the natural way of things. Continuance. But it’s how we continue that’s the important thing here.
Because we know we can’t continue as we’ve been – that presents itself in the Lostness. The Lostness begins our search for the right Doorway for us. To find it we might open many doors, go inside, stay a while, even years sometimes, before we find ourselves still feeling lost.
THAT’S NECESSARY TOO.
Every door we open helps us find another part of ourselves. Sometimes we’ll like what we find and do more of it, sometimes we don’t and we can either go down that same spiral into the nadir, or we can take action and do the real hana/inner work needed to heal what doesn’t fit with how we want to be in life. We can spiral into the nadir, the dark night of the soul, but we can’t stay there. Sooner or later we need to emerge. We emerge through the healing we do. We emerge through the inner learning we do. We emerge by living what we find out about ourselves. We live in alignment with a force greater than ourselves but of which we are also a necessary part.
That’s what we find out when we enter those spaces. We confirm it. Even if the first set of doors isn’t our final landing place. They’re still necessary. A needed part of our own return to the essence, the true nature of our own existence and our place within Existence itself.
THE FORCE IS WITH YOU.
When we feel Lostness, we’ve lost our relationship (not our connection) with the lifeforce/mana of Existence. We’ve forgotten ITS true nature and therefore obscured our own. Our families and friends can be wonderful people, but no matter how wonderful they all are, if we feel out of step with something unnameable but of which innately know exists, we’re out of step. And you’re the only one in the whole of Existence that can put things right.
THINK ABOUT THAT FOR A MOMENT.
That doesn’t mean H-E-L-P isn’t available to you and you have to go it alone. That’s what the Healers and Teachers are for. And then of course there’s the Ancestors. They’re on your side and you’re never alone when you have a pilina/relationship with them. But you’ve got to cultivate it, just as you would any relationship.
And every time you open the doors, even the wrong ones, if you’re doing your inner work (and opening wrong doors is part of that inner work), trying to find THE Truth, trying to find clear space within, trying to find peace, trying to find the pilina/relationship, the Ancestors see it and recognise your effort. Effort is always important to them. They will reach out to you. You reach out to them through Pule/ Prayer – that’s your doorway to them. Pule/Prayer is the container that you create, into which you invite the Ancestors, make space for them, tell them the problem, tell them the help you need and then ask them to show you the way.
YOU WON’T FIND THE WAY IF YOU DON’T DO THE WORK.
That’s the bottom line. You won’t find the way, no matter how many times they show you because you won’t RECOGNISE where they are taking you. And that’s a major reason why people stay in the cycle of Lostness and keep going through the wrong doorways. They don’t recognise all of the ho’ailona/signs, the spiritual taps on the shoulder, because they don’t have the grunt to keep doing the inner work.
They sell themselves short, self-soothing by filling up on the same “it’s OK to stay here” stories that started their movement away from Lostness in the first place. Not knowing how to self-soothe is a problem because it keeps you in false-soothed patterns where you keep doing the same, or more of, the downward cycle behaviours, but you tell yourself they’re somehow different. You make up a paradigm to fit the pattern.
Which means you stay in Lostness…
Sometimes you’ve got to kiss a lot of Frogs to find your Prince or Princess. Each time you do, you learn that the Frog is not the one for you. The Doorways are like that too. Always something to learn, but don’t stay there too long if it isn’t right for you. Stay a while. Learn, Heal, Grow, Change and then Move. When your healing reaches a certain point, then you will clearly recognise the right Doorway and have the right keys to open it and go on in. It will just FEEL right, like you have found where you BELONG.
You might’ve journeyed for a short time or a long time. You might have travelled far or just a few steps. It’s the movement that’s important. That’s the way of all things in this Universe.
MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU.
Because it already is. That’s what the Doors are. They all open inwards…Aloha x
Hmmm, what next Kumu?
- If what you just read seems to resonate or irritate, reflect, reflect, reflect. What is it about this article that’s getting under your skin either way? Can you put feeling words to it, even vague ones. Try to identify and name your feelings
- Go quiet. Take a walk. Sit a while. Contemplate where you are and where you feel you’d like to be – even if it isn’t all that clear. That’s another point of enquiry – what’s getting in the way here?
- Find a skilled Helper to guide you through where you are – the SoHAD Wise Guides have years of experience helping people and they’re always deep in their inner work too. So they know…or find someone close to you that you vibe with
- Come to our monthly free gigs which we livestream – get on the Newsmail list so your get an invite. Like minds help like minds 👉🏽 join our Commune-ity here
- Maybe you want to do a course with us. The Spiritual Intelligence Courses are all about this type of thing – you can DIY with help from US when you need it. You just reach out. Or join our Path to Pa’a Course which is our Hawaiian Spiritual Teachings from our unbroken Lineage. We have preserved them and share them. You can also do this course DIY, self-paced or jjoin a livestreamed class. They are the Foundation Teachings upon which we can learn to build a strong foundation for spiritual living and happiness. You don’t have to be “fully into Hawaiian Stuff” to join or ffind what yuo need…
- Another way to extend on your earlier reflections and going quiet is to do a Traditional Ho’oponopono Session – both Kumu Julia Nālani and Wise Guuide Deborah Rose Hālani do Sessions
by Kumu Nālani | Aug 1, 2022 | Blog Posts, Growing, Healing, Spirituality
A Moʻolelo is a story. Every story preserves important information for a healthy, spiritually-driven life. Teaching Stories have many layers and levels. We call this the kaona – the deeper, sacred meaning concealed within what is shared.
A Haumana/Student learns a moʻolelo word for word so they can share it acurately with the next generation of listeners to benefit from the Teaching. And the story of how the Naupaka Flower came to be goes like this…
There is a shiny green plant that grows near the beaches of Hawaii called the Naupaka. It has small delicate white half flowers. It was named for Naupaka, a Hawaiian Princess who lived many, many years ago at a time when the Naupaka blossoms were whole.
Her people loved Naupaka. She was always smiling and she had sweet words for all the people of the village. One day they noticed Naupaka was very sad. “Aue! Oh dear, why is Naupaka so sad?” they asked each other.
Word reached the King and Queen. They found Naupaka at the mountain pool. The face reflected in the water was a very sad face. “O dear daughter, why are you so sad?” her mother asked.
Naupaka shook her head “I am deeply in love, in love with a handsome young man named Kauʻi”
“Is he of noble birth?” her mother asked.
“No my mother, he is not”
The social order of the day did not allow members of the royal family to marry commoners. Her father said “we must consult the Kupuna/Elders of the Village. They will tell us what to do.”
Alas, the Kupuna did not give their decision. They said “Naupaka and Kauʻi must journey far, they must journey to the Heiau. There the Kahuna will tell them.”
Naupaka and Kauʻi journeyed for many days until they finally reached the great heiau at the top of the mountain.
There they waited at the lava wall and called out to the Kahuna within. “We have arrived here at your temple. Please answer us and come to speak with us.”
The old Kahuna arrived and listened to Naupaka and Kauʻi. He shook his head sadly. “The Hawaiian Gods must decide.”
Suddenly the sky darkened and the wind rose. There was a torrent of rain, a loud clap of thunder and flashes of lightening. Naupaka and Kauʻi embraced sadly. The Gods had given them a sign. They were not to marry.
Naupaka tore the blossom from her hair. She broke it in two and placed half the blossom in Kauʻiʻs palm. “We will separate” she said. “I will remain here in the mountains and you will journey back to the seashore. And, my beloved, never again will we meet”.
The Naupaka blossoms growing nearby heard the lovers sadness and bowed their heads.
To this very day the Naupaka blossom of the mountains and the Naupaka blossom of the seashore remain in perfect halves
The Hawaiians believe that some day Naupaka and Kauʻi will be reunited and the flowers will again bloom as whole, perfect blossoms.
Mahalo Anakala Pilipo Solatorio – this moʻolelo was shared with Uncle by Anake Noni Beamer. Mahalao na Kupuna for preserving this beautiful Teaching Story for us all to learn, live and share.
☝🏽 Learning Challenge From Kumu Nālani:
- Challenge yourself to “think like a Hawaiian” (thatʻs one of the things we help Seekers and Practitioners interested in Hawaiian Culture & Healing to develop) as you read this Moʻolelo
- Can you find the main points that tell you what this Moʻolelo is about?
- What is the purpose of this moʻolelo – the Kupuna/Elders always did things for a purpose, moʻolelo is not different
- Now, can you take it a step further and find the “kaona” – the deeper, sacred meanings placed carefully within this story?
- Write or record your answers – send them to me if you like and Iʻll give you some feedback 😍 here to share with me
- Next Step: put what you learn into practice in your own life…
🌺 We always start each module of our Hawaiian Studies Courses with a Teaching Moʻolelo – you can begin learning about Hawaiian Spirituality, Culture and Healing right now in our distance education, self-paced course: Path to Paʻa. You work your way through all of the learning materials and reach out to Kumu when you need help or clarification. And if we donʻt hear from you, weʻll reach out to you.
🌺 The Path to Paʻa is also in a live, online facilitated format with weekly classes with Kumu Nālani. Suitable for Spiritual Seekers and Healing Practitioners – especially Lomilomi Practitioners to make sure you have our correct cultural teachings in place…youʻll find (as everyone does) your work will go next level very quickly. Get on the mailing list so you know when the next Course is on 👉🏽 here to be first 👉🏽 learn more about our Courses and do the free preview course too (and yes, you can always send Kumu questions too without enrolling in the full course 😊) 👉🏽 click your heels to go here 👉🏽 want to join something really cool that will help you grow into the true essence of yourself – open to Spiritual Seekers and Healing Practitioners especially of Lomilomi – join the Hawaiian Studies Club: the Path to Paʻa is one of the Courses included as part of your membership along with HEAPS of other KA BOOM Learning Activities, Forums and Biz Building Resources 👉🏽 go for a browse here 👉🏽 and then get on the waitlist here
🌺 Things not chugging along as you want? Do one-on-one online Healing Sessions with one of the Wise Guides. Each Wise Guide works with you in a different way 👉🏽 here to find a Wise Guide
☝🏽 We are a Social Enterprise – which means Course Fees and some of your Wise Guide Session Fees go into our Projects Fund, so youʻre helping us to do good things in the world…
by Kumu Nālani | Dec 15, 2021 | Blog Posts, Changing, Growing, Hawaiian Studies Club, Healing, Relationships
WHEN THE YEAR STARTS TO DRAW TO A CLOSE & THE NEW ONE IS ON THE HORIZON it’s time to start looking forward.
When the hurly burly of Christmas & the Holiday Season ramps up it’s easy to get caught up in the distraction as you swing from crazy to chaotic – end of year targets, an endless round of socialising, holidays, Christmas lunch & dinner to think about, as well as co-ordinating visits to the rellies – family. In all of this, there’s one simple question to answer, “are you happy?”.
You might answer sometimes, generally, usually, not always – we all have things in our life that make us feel happy, but deep down are you happy?
If you find yourself saying “I’ll be happy when...”, it’s time to clear the clutter to uncover what truly makes you happy. Finding happy isn’t a chase or a goal to go after, it’s finding where your happy place is within you & the rest follows.
How about making 2022 your year of personal growth, change and development – free from being weighed down by past baggage…
Unfortunately there’s still a lot of stigma about Counselling but Counselling is really all about Personal Development – working one-on-one with someone to help you get where you want to go, to stop doing the things that prevent you from being happy and start doing more of the things that do. It’s that simple.
📅 A Year of Personal Change – what you can do:
1. Let go of expectations of yourself, others and how you think things should be
2. Stop trying to please everyone – it takes you away from your true self
3. Repair resentment, guilt and shame – find its root cause and heal it. Remember we all makes mistakes – it’s how we learn
4. Find forgiveness and you’ll find authentic connections with yourself and others
5. Say goodbye to draining, de-energising relationships – it’s tough but you’ve got to know when it’s not for you
6. Release all the busyness – have you confused it with status and achievement? Or avoidance? It doesn’t give you more of anything except stress and (often) lower self-esteem
7. Money doesn’t buy happiness – of course you need it but what have you traded-off for material gain & earning more & more? And how much do you really need anyway?
8. Let go of fear of abandonment – it leads to poor decision making
9. And let go of fear too – that’s one thing the Kūpuna/Elders always advise. Fear is the distortion of the Ego which is designed to help you in this school of life.
A list is just a list without action and action is hard to take on your own – that’s why you need a Wise Guide to help you access the places you would not be able to go by yourself and cheer you on through the tough stuff…they also make sure you’re holding yourself in love and not judgement
☝ If this strikes a chord and you want 2022 to be a milestone year, then make a time with Mark or one of the other Wise Guides and get set for 2022…
by Kumu Nālani | Oct 2, 2021 | Blog Posts, Growing, Healing, Spirituality
The Slow Movement: slow down you move too fast, you’ve got to make these moments last…
For years we’ve been vocal advocates for the Slow Movement Movement! In our Healing Studio with Clients, in workshops, courses, Wise Guide Sessions – we love the slow!
Slow movement is all about slowing things down but it’s more than just taking time to stop and smell the roses. In fact, it’s not about stopping at all, which eases the horror when I tell someone it’s time to wind it back a bit…
Now, I never advocate what I haven’t tried myself, so for most of the last few years, I’ve really gotten into the movement of doing things real slow. And what’s the easiest way to try it out – through excercise.
Put your hand up if you rush through your stretching to get to the main event? Every time I’ve asked someone about stretching they all say the same thing “I rush through it to get it over and done with...” Well, that’s where just about everyone gets it wrong.
But stretching isn’t only about getting ready to do your exercises – strip back the traditional stretching activities like Yoga and you’ll remember that it’s all about the PROCESS of opening, exploring, being curious, interested and aware. So slow stretch before Yoga is necessary to get more out of it…
In the battle for the bikini body, it seems the message of Yoga (and all stretching actually) is getting lost.
Your spirit, mind & body love the process of “interested curiosity” and you’ll find that the effects of your stretching and follow-on exercises will actually last longer. The slower you go the longer the benefits stick around. I’d love to say slow movement is mindfulness, but I get stuck there as well because the word MINDFULNESS is so exploited its real meaning is getting lost somewhere too.
But I guess Mindfulness, the real kind, is probably the best description of the tool needed for slow movement effectiveness. After 5 years at Buddhist School, which seems a lifetime ago (or many lifetimes from the Buddhist perspective!) what I learned was the purpose of mindfulness was to end suffering by developing insight and the ability to be fully aware in the moment.
So whether it’s Mindfulness or interested curiousity, when it comes to a healthy Spirit, Mind and Body, the point is to take things slowly so you become aware of what’s actually stuck in there and put an end to it by releasing it…
…S L O W – GIVE YOUR BODY A CHANCE AND IT WILL SHOW YOU WHY IT LIKES TO GO SLOW RATHER THAN PUMPING THE PERSPERATION
☝ Let me explain how it works.
I’ve been rehabing a mysterious hip injury for at least 2 years and against my better judgement I took advice to stop doing Yoga. At the time I wasn’t so sure it was a good thing to do and now I wished I’d listened to my own inner knowing of what’s good for me.
Anyway, the good thing about not listening to myself was I returned to the roots of yogic practice. Even though parts of my job is physical, Lomiomi moves you in a different way. And when I wasn’t offsetting this because of my injury, my own muscle tone fell away.
At the same time, I’m thinking about why my original injury’s taking it’s time to heal. You know, what else is stuck in there? Cue SHAZAAM MOMENT! 🤸♀️ Of course, body wisdom. Your body always knows the answer to what’s needed if you give it (and yourself) time to team up and you do the listening rather than the doing. Bodies speak slowly…
All kinds of stagnant, stalled energy gets stuck in there. Some of it is years old that’s gotten stuffed in there. But it can’t get out if you keep stuffing more on top of it. And that’s where the slow movement – literally, slow movement, comes in.
When you go slow, you also have to start engaging with your breath differently, you don’t have any other choice. So your breath becomes your super-charged power weapon. Think Tai Chi, Qi Gong and all those other slow moving activities (watch a video if it seems so out of your stratosphere that you couldn’t possibly imagine moving so slowly) – and what do they have in common? Go to the top of the class!
👉 Slow movement allied by the slow movement of the breath kills the lower order thinking mind’s (the Ego) need for distraction and aversion – especially to those things that are actually good for it. The Ego acts this way because it never lives in the present – which is part of mindfulness training and also the tool need to go slow.
Let’s not get lost here – we’re discussing the benefits of going slow and using your body wisdom to do it. The Ego won’t want you to go slow – as soon as you do its going to fill your mind with chatter about what you “should” be doing so you better hurry up.
But you will have better health and wellbeing for longer, if you just go slower. For example, when you go slow, you can hear how your body talks to you; you can feel how your breath moves through your body and actually points to where things are stiff or stuck. You become aware that if you direct your breath into your joints, for example, it will curl its way through and around the ends of your bones always looking for the space between them to clear and open them up – which is why over time you’ll notice that you’re less stiff and more flexible. And really that’s the aim of all Yoga and excercise.
So take it really slow and make the stretching part of the excerise not the entree.
But it’s more than the just the physical effects, it’s the emotional and mental impact too. When you let your breath be the Explorer it will take you deeper into your body wisdom and you become aware of the emotion that’s stuck in your joints, bones and muscles.
How many times during the day do you find yourself choking back emotion to keep the peace or save embarrassment? It all has to go somewhere and it goes deep into your body…
When you go slow, you easily and naturally contact it and it releases. You’ll know because you’ll feel much freer when you move. And that’s why stretching is really the main event. So take it slow, breath slow, move slow and your thinking will be sharper too.
by Kumu Nālani | Sep 3, 2021 | Blog Posts, Healing
If you’re finding yourself lying awake for hours on end, then learning how to activate your breath can send you off to La La Land in no time at all.
Working on the quality of your breathing has many health benefits. Getting top quality “healthy breath” may take you a few months of practice – but you sure will notice the difference in youthfulness, energy, vitality, weight management, muscle tone and of course, sleep quality.
That’s why when you’re in a healing session or training session, we always start with awareness of the breath. The breath tells you a lot about what’s going on at the day-to-day level, as well as the deeper levels where we usually need a scuba tank to visit.
Most people are terrible breathers – and it really sells out your body, not too mention escalating your stress levels. Learning how to breath not only helps manage things like blood pressure but can also alleviate aches and pains due to poor posture.
Bad breathing can trigger other bad habits and leaves you susceptible to lower back pain. Worst of all, if you’re surrounded by other bad breathers, you’ll tend to pick up their shallow breathing habits as well!
Good breathing means going deep into the lower abdomen where oxygen rich blood is in ready supply. Good deep breathing also needs to be easy and effortless – over time this will become second nature and you’ll eventually be able to breathe in through your feet, sending the breath around your body before eventually breathing out through your feet again.
Correct breathing utilises and helps tone the core muscles, so there’s another reason to do it right. Kumu Julia, our Chief Guide says “I love Yogic Pranayama but I still use the Alexander Technique I trained in years ago at Drama School too. You can easily find them on the internet. The important thing is to choose a method you can maintain and get a better night’s sleep”.
