Haumanu - restorative systems change

Haumanu mai runga
Haumanu mai raro
Haumanu mai roto
Haumanu mai waho
Haumanu te pūtake o tēnei kaupapa
Kia pūrangiaho tātau, i te wānanga me te kōrero
Tēnei te tīti ake i te pou haumanu ki te pūtake o tēnei wānanga
Tuturu o whiti whakamaua kia tīna, tīna, haumie hui e taiki e.

Restoration is above
Restoration is below
Restoration is within
Restoration is around us
Restoration is the source of learning
We all come together to understand, consider and talk
The strength of restoration underpins and sets the foundation for our consideration permanently guiding us, together.

- Kiritahanga Hona and Tuihana Ohia

The questions that inspired the development of Haumanu

How might we design our social systems and run our organisations from deeply held paradigms and practices of connection, wellness and restoration? How can we work with our central nervous systems to do system change work from the wisest, calmest, most connected parts of ourselves?

Centre for Social Impact Associates Louise Marra, Tuihana Ohia, Kate Cherrington, Rachael Trotman and Chloe Harwood have been exploring these questions since 2021 and testing an approach to bring healing into the work of system change. With the aim to grow networks of people who can model and facilitate restorative ways of working, to redesign our systems and organisations from places of wellness.

The Haumanu framework is an emerging approach to restorative systems change that draws from mātauranga Māori and Western knowledge. It incorporates insights from Theory U, Thomas Hubl’s work on healing collective trauma, and from the wisdom passed down from our collective tupuna or ancestors. Haumanu means to restore and rejuvenate, and the approach provides a conceptual framework, a process method and practices to address collective trauma as it arises, and to redesign our systems from a place of mauri ora (wellness and wholeness).

Bringing restoration into the work of systems change means changing the way we work, relate, design and learn together. Our framework for restorative systems change below indicates how this can work, with the explanation starting from the bottom up – with mauri ora, or the flow of life. The systemic issues are on the left and the strategy for addressing them is on the right. We provide more detail on how we do this work further below.

Mauri ora is the place from which we seek to operate – and mauri ora (wellness) is also the purpose of the work. We use practices designed to help us operate from a place of safety, calm and connection to the flow of life.

Hōnonga (relationships)/connect – to address disconnection and trauma we bring people together who want to work in a different way – who want to address collective trauma as it arises and include healing and restoration in their day-to-day work. These people are up for connecting, sharing and learning at deeper levels, for being uncomfortable, for being vulnerable – for depth work.

Mamae (pain and trauma)/haumanu (restore) – trauma stores in our bodies and in the earth; it blocks the flow of energy through our bodies and through the collective. We work in groups to surface, acknowledge and process collective and intergenerational trauma. The usual way of operating is to avoid, ignore, project or repress difficult issues and feelings, or to try and ‘think’ our way through them. Instead, a restorative approach can just become a way of working, as a trauma response or trigger arises, we slow down, we resource ourselves and the group to meet it, and we feel it together.

Whare (structures)/haututū (disrupt) - systems change work in this framework looks at the structures at play and how they affect mauri or life force. The strategy at this layer is to be ‘haututū’ – a disruptor, advocate, to undo and let go - and the energy is of fire and activism. In our organisations and contexts, we can ask what can be stopped, what can be changed and what can be started from an interconnected and holistic paradigm? We work to notice when we have gone into separation and disconnection and pause, so that we can reconnect. We look at the systems or processes we can change or let go of now, and what will take time and how this can begin.

Tōhu (symptom)/Ako (deep learning) - across all layers of the framework is an ako or learning focus, where deep reflective processes are threaded through the group’s work. We employ a developmental evaluation approach, creating feedback loops to shape the work as it goes (see for example Patton, McKegg, Wehipeihana 2016). Tōhu, or signs of progress and change are observed, to guide adaptation.

Much of the current work of systems change occurs in the top two layers of this framework – focusing on the symptoms created by systems and changing the structures that are the most visible face of systems – especially policies, legislation, rules and practices. Trauma will keep leading until we get to the deeper levels, creating from a place of connection rather than disconnection, and healing collective hurts along the way together.

Download the Haumanu framework model.

The point of this work is you can’t do it alone, when something arises it’s not necessarily yours, and it is arising for us to work with it. The restoration is always in the wound.

To support people and organisations to apply this thinking in a practical way, we have developed a process. It has a flow but is not a neat or linear process. We call it Āta, a reference in Māori to the slow and deep work of relating and reflecting.

The Āta model follows a general flow of:

• resourcing people for working in this way
• building connection and coherence within the group involved
• a process for the group to collectively feel and integrate the collective trauma or issue to be restored
• generating the new and the conditions to bring the new into being
• continuously learning about and strengthening the approach.

Skillful facilitation of the Āta process by at least two people is required to hold and lead the process. Facilitators and participants need to feel adequately resourced for the work (grounded, calm, present, safe and aware), and to ‘re-source’ ourselves if we don’t.

1. Taonga/resource and re-source – we draw on group and individual practices that help people access the ventral vagal, building connection and safety for people to relax into. Examples of processes include using karakia (sacred prayers) waiata (song), sound, movement, touch, identifying and doing what resources us in our mind, body, family and spirit.
2. Papatūānuku/reroot – we bring in the earth and our connections to earth to keep us grounded and connected to earth. Examples of processes include bringing places people love into the room through visualisation or going outside to do sensing and connecting activities.
3. Kotahitanga/unity – we build coherence and unity within the group. Examples of processes include presencing your state, play, vulnerability, attunement and co-regulation processes.
4. Haututū/letting come apart – we look at what needs disrupting, letting go, what is not working or disconnected that needs to be changed. Examples of practices include trigger mapping, rewiring processes, understanding how white superiority and human superiority work in our body systems and institutions, reflection, understanding the roots of the white western orthodox worldview, using polarities and paradigm switching.
5. Kaupapa/set intentions – we set intentions for what we are wanting to work with, getting clear on purpose. Examples of processes include creative practice, meditation, somatic feeling of the intention for the group to work with.
6. Haumanu/restoration – we connect to a collective trauma field in the room and each person presences how that trauma field arises in them, while others listen. As part of the sharing, the restorative medicine for that trauma usually arrives. We digest, we stay connected to our bodies and to each other, we support, we co-regulate, until it feels like that trauma field or wave has moved through – for now. We debrief on how that felt for everyone and how they feel now.
7. Whakatipuranga/generate – we create, we generate, we proliferate from the creative energy and flow that usually follows a trauma digestion process.
8. Poutama – we learn, we capture, we document, we evaluate.

Download the Āta process model.

Our central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) is how we receive, process and respond to sensory information. Our approach is informed by American psychologist and neuroscientist Stephen Porges' work on Polyvagal Theory. Polyvagal Theory explores how our bodily state influences how we experience the world, and how we can cultivate physiologies of calmness and safety, through our individual bodies, in groups and through our social systems.

Put simply, Polyvagal Theory frames our physiology through three responses – a relational response from our essential self (ventral vagal), fight or flight response from our activated self (sympathetic), and freeze response from our numbed, overwhelmed self (dorsal vagal). All of these are intelligent and adaptive responses, and more than one can be in play in any situation.

We have developed the image below to show how we can understand and work with our central nervous systems more skilfully in system change work. We seek to operate from and design our systems from a place of mauri ora (connection, life force and wellness), by resourcing ourselves to feel calm, safe, connected and relaxed.

We are a sea of sensations with these fluctuating states all the time. If we can start to bring awareness and love to them we can be a healing agent in life.

Download working with our central nervous system/s.

We have been working to deepen our understanding of how to bring healing in to support systems change through prototyping, refining and co-developing. This has included bringing together a community of practice with leaders of nonprofits, delivering a leadership programme and offering facilitation training for those interested in trailling this mahi.

The Haumanu community of practice consisted of a group of 23 not for profit, community sector kaimahi. Who, between August 2022 and March 2023, met monthly online to learn about and prototype the Haumanu Framework.

The programme focused on individual skills and practices to support wellbeing and restoration along with resources to support teams, and organisations, to build skills and practices for restorative systems change work. Participants were encouraged to prototype and see what worked within their context.

Watch a short clip about the participants experience below.

Read summary of learning from the programme.

Women’s Refuge is New Zealand’s largest nation-wide organisation that supports and helps women and children experiencing domestic violence. An inaugural Wāhine Kī Toa leadership programme, developed by CSI in partnership with the National Office for Women’s Refuge, was offered to refuge staff in 2023, with a further cohort in 2024 and one planned for 2025. 

The programme was facilitated by CSI associates Louise Marra, Tuihana Ohia and Rachael Trotman with support from Donna Hall and Cathy Livermore. The programme drew on their combined experience with Haumanu to shape a highly participative process. In addition to six online wānanga, four kanohi ki te kanohi hui were held that allowed the women to be together away from the pressures of work. For the participants, the programme offered the benefits of both designed learning, and learning from the diverse experiences of their co-workers in other regions. Personal confidence, increased self-care, and a greater capacity to contribute to their teams were noted by participants. 

Watch a short clip about the participants experience below.

In 2024 CSI offered a group of accomplished facilitators learning to facilitate Haumanu in their cultural context. This group of 15 facilitators came together for three kanohi ki te kanohi hui as well as three online wānanga to learn about Haumanu, the Āta process and how to include Haumanu in their own practices as well as being able to support organisations looking to do this work.

Watch a short clip where participants share their experience of Haumanu.

We have developed some tools and resources to help you and your teams to re source – build connection and ground

• Ngahere
• Ngahere for teams
• Uno Ora

• Collective Change Lab's Stories of what is possible in systems healing: Haumanu. A healing approach to systems.
• Collective Change Lab 

If you are interested to discuss Haumanu further and how this could be applied in your context, please get in touch via contact@csinz.org.

Image: Yathursan Gunaratnam via Unsplash.