OHA

10/03/2023

Every thought and every action that you give to another you give to yourself. The wheel turns and it comes back to you in kind, greatly multiplied.

There are times when koha is less of a transaction than it is an interraction. The exchange isn’t so weighed down with calculations ⚖️ but free’d for the natural unfoldings of exchange, unengineered.

This is koha. Stop calling it a donation!!

But let your gifts of aroha ❤️ be just that. Celebrating this beautiful koha that walked through the door this evening.

19/02/2023

23/01/2023

Creating Space 2023

Callling any healers and bodyworkers in the area to come join us in the Wāhi Tinana 🙌💛 ✨

Looking forward to sharing in the spirit of koha and manaaki this weekend with our talented healers collective.

Nau mai haramai.

09/01/2023

BE POLITE TO NATURE

Ask permission:
Before cutting the branch of a tree or removing a flower, tell the spirit of the tree or plant what you are going to do, so that they can withdraw their energy from that place and not feel the cut so strong.

When you go to nature and want to take a stone that was in the river, ask the river keeper if he allows you to take one of his sacred stones.

If you have to climb a mountain or make a pilgrimage through the jungle, ask permission from the spirits and guardians of the place. It is very important that you communicate even if you do not feel, do not listen or do not see. Enter with respect to each place, since Nature listens to you, sees you and feels you.

Every movement you make in the microcosm generates a great impact on the macrocosm.

When you approach an animal, give thanks for the medicine it has for you.

Honor life in its many forms and be aware that each being is fulfilling its purpose, nothing was created to fill spaces, everything and everyone is here remembering our mission, remembering who we are and awakening from the sacred dream to return home.

-Diane DiGirolamo Rivera

Te awa ko Waiōhine- Tararua ki te Tonga

20/12/2022

The beautiful life cycle of Whau from seed, leaf, bud, blossom and back to seed in my local reserve.

I first met the tropical Whau at my Dad’s on the whānau papakāinga-Te Kahika. Light wood he said, good for making a quick raft.

Much later when visiting Rarotonga at a medicine women’s garden she talked about her Whau tree that all her aunts and grandmothers healed her people from ‘that Cancer’ but now everyone she says moves to NZ and gets Chemotherapy, ‘they’re all disconnected from our medicine now’ 😞 come home 🏝

Then through learning the deeper secrets within our Purākau Ātua Māori-talking with elders and friends, we know that Whau is one of Mahuika’s 🔥 fingertips, each being a tree that is good for starting fire and for killing inflammation within the body.

Whau is a prickly sweetheart and keeps giving every season. I like to take the seed pods and scatter them all over the reserve 🥰

19/12/2022

To my fellow female bodyworkers and female recipients of bodywork. May every women in every healing space feel safe and be able to heal from workplace assault and trauma.

This one’s for us 💗🌸 💗

30/11/2022

The Runa (Rumex Flexuosus, NZ Dock)is so prolific and large in our maara this month that I‘ve been taking to Inaki-Runa (body wraps)for my tangata whaiora.

Harvesting during Tangaroa and again in Tamatea moon phases, despineing and rolling these giants is such a gorgeous process.

It’s been proving incredible results for smoking cessation, reducing intake from 7 ci******es a day to 3 sometimes none, also reducing his cravings after a few puffs for my smoker friend (pictured with his testimonial)

This really surprised me as I had only ever used it for boils, removing poisonous blood and supporting relief for varicose veins. But it makes so much sense for smoking cessation too! It pays to follow your whakapūtoro-first thought when meditating on tangata whaiora needs.

The aroma from decoctions and infusions is similar to the scent of stewed rhubarb and taste not too far from it with that slight bitter.

Our beautiful rongoā Māori never ceases to amaze me.

He tino taonga ngā rau runa
🍃💚🍃

14/12/2020

"And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about."
Haruki Murakami

Image:taken from the blowhole looking across to where my grt grt Kuia was born

12/12/2020

Update: OHA healing is now based in the Old Opoutama School, Mahia. All bookings are made via this page.

Walk-ins at the Mahia Seaside 🏝 markets will be accepted every Sunday this Summer 9am-12pm.

Mauri ora!! 🌊 ✨

04/12/2020

💗🤍 so worth the care.

“Self-care is often a very unbeautiful thing.

It is making a spreadsheet of your debt and enforcing a morning routine and cooking yourself healthy meals and no longer just running from your problems and calling the distraction a solution.

It is often doing the ugliest thing that you have to do, like sweat through another workout or tell a toxic friend you don’t want to see them anymore or get a second job so you can have a savings account or figure out a way to accept yourself so that you’re not constantly exhausted from trying to be everything, all the time and then needing to take deliberate, mandated breaks from living to do basic things like drop some oil into a bath and read Marie Claire and turn your phone off for the day.

A world in which self-care has to be such a trendy topic is a world that is sick. Self-care should not be something we resort to because we are so absolutely exhausted that we need some reprieve from our own relentless internal pressure.

True self-care is not salt baths and chocolate cake, it is making the choice to build a life you don’t need to regularly escape from.

And that often takes doing the thing you least want to do.

It often means looking your failures and disappointments square in the eye and re-strategizing. It is not satiating your immediate desires. It is letting go. It is choosing new. It is disappointing some people. It is making sacrifices for others. It is living a way that other people won’t, so maybe you can live in a way that other people can’t.

It is letting yourself be normal. Regular. Unexceptional. It is sometimes having a dirty kitchen and deciding your ultimate goal in life isn’t going to be having abs and keeping up with your fake friends. It is deciding how much of your anxiety comes from not actualizing your latent potential, and how much comes from the way you were being trained to think before you even knew what was happening.

If you find yourself having to regularly indulge in consumer self-care, it’s because you are disconnected from actual self-care, which has very little to do with “treating yourself” and a whole lot do with parenting yourself and making choices for your long-term wellness.

It is no longer using your hectic and unreasonable life as justification for self-sabotage in the form of liquor and procrastination. It is learning how to stop trying to “fix yourself” and start trying to take care of yourself… and maybe finding that taking care lovingly attends to a lot of the problems you were trying to fix in the first place.

It means being the hero of your life, not the victim. It means rewiring what you have until your everyday life isn’t something you need therapy to recover from. It is no longer choosing a life that looks good over a life that feels good. It is giving the hell up on some goals so you can care about others. It is being honest even if that means you aren’t universally liked. It is meeting your own needs so you aren’t anxious and dependent on other people.

It is becoming the person you know you want and are meant to be. Someone who knows that salt baths and chocolate cake are ways to enjoy life – not escape from it.”
-Brianna Wiest
https://ko-fi.com/donate_nepenthe



[Illustration: Yaoyao Ma Van As Art ]

30/11/2020

For all the Rongoā rākau lovers💚