the breath of life: how tihei mauri ora changed everything
It’s tiiiiiime. Time for some breathwork! Big breath in….. hold…. aaaand exhale…. one more time… in for three.. two… two and a half… one… aaaand hold.
Keep holding.. Almost there.. One more….. Ok now exhale… ahhhhh.. how you feeling?
Anyway haha we’re flowing on from kai and wai (food and water) in our sequence of wānanga (internalisation, reflection*) and moving our energy through that wave of whakaaro (thought) on how we can survive for weeks without food, days without water, minutes without air and can’t survive without light. So what does that mean about our relationship and interactions with the atua (gods, elemental forces) associated with those domains?
How can we improve those connections to attain that optimal health and wellness?
Because connection is the goal, right? To improve and enhance our connection to ourself, to each other or those we care for, the taiao (natural environment) and so on?
Improved health and wellness is the byproduct of a deeper, attuned connection to who we are and disconnection or disassociation from those things that might cause us harm.. that’s how I approach it anyway, rather than focus on improving my health directly — I focus on how I’m engaging with atua (oldest ancestors, tupuna), what the interactions mean,
what they’re imprinting onto me and what am I imprinting back on them?
This perspective means my health and wellness (or unhealthiness and unwell-ness…) reflects the level of connection, interaction and engagement I have with atua and how attuned I am to it and to them.
Tāwhirimātea (atua/personification of winds) Tāne Mahuta (atua/personification of forest) and Hineahuone (Earth formed Maiden, first woman) come to mind straight off the bat, with their associations to breath, oxygen, air and anything related to those elements.
Let's start with the reason we're all here: Hineahuone.
Fashioned from and at te one (earth) i Kurawaka, each of the atua gave expressions of themselves to Hineahuone, which we can identify in our own bodies in different functions organs and systems but more on that another time.
She was given everything she needed and nothing she didn’t,
she was built for purpose.°
Yet still, it wasn’t until the exchange of air/breath through the hongi with Tāne, that Hineahuone was brought to life and the first human came to be.
A significant moment in our whakapapa (genealogy, ancestry) where te ira atua (divine/godly line of descent) was woven together with te ira tangata (the human/mortal line) for the very. first. time. Kind of a big deal…
So if you feel like you need to, take another breather — minimum two deep breaths should do it. When you’re ready, one last little thing… as you were…
Creating the human element was learned from the knowledge contained within ngā kete o te wānanga (the baskets of knowledge) that Tāne retrieved from the Uppermost Heaven, with the help of Tāwhirimātea….. so this trio are more intertwined than I knew, especially compared to when I first started writing this post.. and it’s only piqued my interest as to what this insight means in terms of how we can connect with them in different ways..
Not just to improve our health and wellness, but what this means in relation to the role air/oxygen plays in us realising potential, pursuing excellence and knowledge etc.
— what Tāne did in reaching Tikitikiōrangi (Uppermost Heaven), why it was Tāwhirimātea whom he called on to help him out and defeat Whiro (atua of misfortune), why Tāwhiri helped him (keeping in mind this was post Tāwhiri unleashing on his siblings in te pakanga atua [war of the gods] by the way lol), and how te ira tangata was created and brought to life — with the breath…
Tīhei… Mauri ora!
— this really did change everything… if that’s the effect it had aeons ago, surely it’d have a similar effect today?
He whakaaro, tēnā tātou,
Hana.
*Wānanga also has other definitions, check ‘em out here.
°Just as we are built for purpose! With everything we need already within us, waiting to be remembered and harnessed.