If I were to categorize the overarching methodology of my healing practice, I might call it something like “spiritual re-parenting.” When a client presents with a longstanding problem, pattern, or self-limiting story, we seek to find its origin together—where or when did the client first learn that they were unlovable, wrong, not good enough, unworthy? These entrenched patterns almost always trace back to childhood, and to go back to the source of the issue—attending to “the child within”—can be a transformative way of relating to oneself.
There are many Western terms for this kind of therapeutic approach, including “inner child work,” “reframing of the past,” and “soul retrieval.” Ho’oponopono, the Hawaiian forgiveness process (which will be covered in depth later in this book) is a simple and potent practice that achieves these ends with directness and efficiency; it’s a kind of “map” that demonstrates the magical alchemy of what love can do. To co-create our lives with support from the benevolent spiritual intelligences that want nothing more than to lovingly assist us back to our wholeness, is to practice Ho’oponopono.
Before I formally trained in Ho’oponopono, my first introduction to it was through a five-minute YouTube video. Huna seems to merge immediately with my intuitive understanding. Based on the information from the video, I created a Ho‘oponopono practice that I could use with my clients, and which I still use.
The day that I first decided to experiment with Ho‘oponopono with some of my clients, the results were beautiful, and I was quite surprised by just how positive they were. Everyone that I brought through the process experienced a gentle and deeply healing reclamation of themselves. Even more surprising was that as we did Ho‘oponopono together, I, as well as some of my clients, sensed a palpable “presence” around us, as if the process was inviting in a kind of spiritual energy or grace that seemed to fill the room. Even the lights in my office would sometimes flicker and shift. To this day, I often experience these kinds of phenomena when I am guiding someone in the Ho‘oponopono process, and the first time it happened, it seemed to be synchronistic evidence of the legitimacy and potency of a practice that would eventually become the foundational model for my healing work.
But then I got scared. I had no training in Ho’oponopono, I was clearly trafficking in some intense energy, and I didn’t exactly know what I was doing. (I had only watched a YouTube video, for goodness sake!) I went to talk to my supervisor, Brian, who I had been working with for almost twenty years. Brian is a primary spiritual influence in my life. He is among the wisest people I know, and if I ever say anything clever, it probably came from him first. We began our conversation as therapist and client, and now our relationship has taken on a professional affiliation. These days, he is the person I talk to about client work, ethics, and standards of practice. Even though I am not a clinician, I have a large practice, and I find his supervisory support vitally important. Plus, sometimes you just need someone to talk you off the ledge, and my first experience with Ho‘oponopono was one of those times.
After I told Brian about what had happened when I used Ho‘oponopono with my clients, I said to him, “But Brian, this can’t be right, I have no idea what I am doing, I just watched a YouTube video. I’m a fraud!”
“Well, yes, but you said it worked, right?” he replied.
“Like gangbusters,” I said, “but I don’t know exactly why.”
“Relax,” he replied. “Keep doing it, and by all means take a class to make yourself feel better. But it’s clear that you have tapped into something universal, and you seem to instinctively already know how to do this.”
Brian’s advice pointed toward the sixth and seventh principles of Huna. The sixth says, “All power comes from within.” I already had the knowledge. It couldn’t not be inside me, because everything was already inside me . As my wonderful shamanic teacher Llyn Roberts often says to her groups, “The wisdom is in the circle,” meaning there is no hierarchy between her and her students; she has nothing to teach that isn’t already held and known in the group. The seventh Huna principle states, “Effectiveness is the measure of truth.” In other words, if it works—as Ho‘oponopono certainly did with my clients—then it’s real. In fact, I have heard my magnificent Huna teacher, Serge Kahili King, Ph.D., exclaim, “If it works, then it’s Huna!”
Now, I am not claiming that all you have to do is watch a YouTube video and then you can run out and open a healing practice, although I am definitely a bit of a mad scientist when it comes to this stuff. But, often, in my trainings, participants don’t take what they learn back into their everyday lives because they are either afraid that they might do it incorrectly or they lack the confidence or self-esteem that gives them permission to try.
As I mentioned in the preface, so much esoteric wisdom that was once considered “secret” is now readily available to the masses. The intelligences of the Universe know what they are doing, and if you have found your way to any of it, you owe it to yourself to try it out at your current level of understanding and development. Don’t worry about it, just try it. Remember the fourth Huna principle, “Now is the moment of power.” Use the practices you learn in this book in the present moment, and they will work for you too!
The Psychics in My Office
During the time when I was enmeshing myself in all things Hawaiian, I was allowing a talented group of psychics and mediums to rent my office on Friday nights for a bimonthly practice circle. I myself had little to do with the group, and I only attended intermittently—and when I did, I kept to myself and allowed myself to be a student. The participants had a vague notion that I was a healer, but they didn’t know me well, and I hadn’t shared with anyone that I had been studying Huna.
One Friday night when I didn’t attend the circle, I stayed home, reading a book about Hawaiian spirituality. (Yes, I know what you’re thinking. That is the extent to how exciting most of my Friday nights are these days!) Around ten o’clock that evening, the time when the psychics and mediums would have just finished their meeting, I received a text message from the head facilitator: “Great group tonight. Sorry you missed it. And what’s going on with Hawaii?”
I looked at my phone, perplexed. As far as I knew, no one in the group had any knowledge about any connection I had to Hawaii. I texted back, “OK, this is weird. Why are you asking me this?”
His reply was, “Well, we had this totally strange thing happen tonight. Everyone was psychically getting all these Polynesian gods and goddesses in your office that they didn’t recognize and have never received before. The entire group were on their phones Googling them, and they seem to have been Hawaiian.”
By this time, Hawaii synchronicities had become pretty commonplace for me, so rather than being stunned reaction, I just laughed. Pretty freaky, right? Well, yes, but if you remember that the first Huna principle is “The world is what you think it is,” you will understand why I believed this to be a message of encouragement for me to stay on this path: the akua were clearly working with me. And the third Huna principle, “Energy flows where attention goes,” showed me that my continued focus on Huna was creating an energetic current with Hawaii that had found its way into my workspace five thousand miles away from the islands.
The Omega Institute
For the past few years, I have been honored to co-facilitate shamanic Reiki programs at the prestigious Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York. Omega is arguably the largest holistic learning facility in the world, hosting hundreds of programs each year for tens of thousands of attendees. Llyn Roberts, who has been a faculty staple there for over twenty years, made an introduction for me to meet with the program director to discuss the possibility of them sponsoring my own shamanic program. It is a very exclusive honor to teach at Omega; only the most celebrated spiritual teachers have offerings there.