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Ho’oponopono is a cultural practice that incorporates various components to realign the participant(s) with spirit, mind and body or past, present and future. Ho’oponopono’s intent is to bring harmony into your life, to help you regain cultural values of respect and aloha for one another, and to open your eyes to a healthier life ahead. The components to Ho’oponopono are: Pule Wehe—Opening prayer for guidance and protection. Kumahana—The truthful sharing of challenges impairing you, and/or you and your family/relations. Mahiki—The Kahuna Ho’ola /Ho’oponopono practitioner peels away one challenge layer at a time. Helping you to feel lighter and less burdened. Ho’omalu—A time for silence and reflection. Pule Ho’opau—Closing Prayer. Ho’oponopono: Ho’oponopono is defined as a process of settling or making things right. A precise structure of four phases of this process is used to help resolve the emotional or spiritual aspects of the client’s case. Sonny Kinney, an expert haku (person who conducts Ho'oponopono sessions), says that the use of prayer at the opening and closing of a session sets the tone, and generates trust and good feelings. When a person has done something that creates a loss of balance in their relationship within themselves or with significant others, a process of forgiveness and reconciliation is necessary for optimal healing. Ho’oponopono is a traditional system for restoring Lokahi, or harmony, within the client and their ohana (extended family). Many LomiLomi practitioners are trained in the basic aspects of this art. If something has occurred which interferes with the therapist’s ability to control their thoughts, then Ho'oponopono is practiced. Ho'oponopono is a prayer of forgiveness and of making things right. It must be done if we have harmed another person or ourselves in though, word or deed. According to Mary Golden, a LomiLomi instructor from Colorado, Ho'oponopono “is a spiritual practice of making things right with yourself and all others before God. One who truly practices Ho'oponopono is one who takes a daily inventory of his or her thoughts. Any intent to harm, any conscious or unconscious attitudes of malice, jealousy, or hatred must be rooted out and replaced with aloha. Aloha is recognizing the divine nature in every living thing.” According to Dane Silva, D.O., a native Hawaiian healing arts practitioner, Ho'oponopono is also used when someone has suffered a serious loss, causing emotional trauma that runs deep into the internal organs. This affects the spirit, and leads to internal imbalance and systemic dysfunction. Unless it is corrected and made right again, a person’s thought, feeling and behavior may be negatively affected. Ho'oponopono restores balance and function within the individual, within the family, within the community and within the environment (aina). Based on traditional cultural values and concepts, Ho'oponopono has been adapted to work within the fabric of modern society, with each participant observing a specific protocol. By opening one’s heart and mind in a supportive group, led by a respected family elder or local practitioner, the practice of healing from within begins. Many massage traditions teach that the therapist must continually shield him or herself from negativity that may be coming from the client, but LomiLomi teaches the opposite. The client is considered to be the vulnerable one, open to and receiving the therapist’s energy, positive or negative. LomiLomi practitioners must learn to control their thoughts and trust in their higher selves in order to direct positive healing energy to clients. Dedicated practitioners know that this is a constant process of self-awareness and prayer. “All things are made of pure consciousness - their limited appearance is the condition of consciousness.” Yates says. “Therefore, if you want to change anything in yourself you must change the process of thought that affects the materialization of consciousness into different forms of matter and action. For the Hawaiian medicine person this is the only way to remold one’s life.” The old ways of the Hawaiian ancestors are being absorbed into a technological world; however, the original intention of aloha remains. A LomiLomi session is a respite from the outside world; a sacred experience where the massage table becomes an altar and divinity touches humanity. It is a mystical meeting that produces an altered state of consciousness and an incredible sense of well-being of body, mind and spirit, for the practitioner as well as the recipient. For it is in sharing aloha that one truly receives its many blessings.
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