Te Pūaha Talks - Ngahere - nurturing our connectivity

Our hauora is like the ngahere, or forest; for the ecosystem to thrive, there must be balance. Te Pūaha Talks – Ngahere is a series of webinars designed by Tuihana Ohia and Louise Marra to encourage us to nurture our connection to Papatuanuku, Mother Earth, and integrate well-being practices into our daily lives.

Each Ngahere webinar introduces two one-minute mindful meditations, Hā moments, a tool to help us slow down, check in with ourselves, and acknowledge the superpowers that make each of us unique.

The Hā moment practices are a gift to ourselves. Each meditation comes with a whakatauki, a written resource, and an audio recording to guide you through the meditation. By taking just one minute throughout the day to pause, we’re better able to show up and be present for our communities, whānau, friends, and mahi.

Click here to download the Ngahere - Resource Document

The Six x One Challenge is designed to encourage you to take micropauses throughout the day, every day. It is about making time six times a day to take a minute to come back into your connected, whole and essential self. These micropauses help us calm and unwind our nervous system. Every day that we practice these micropauses, we teach our minds and bodies to learn the art of unwinding, while reducing stress and reconnecting us to our breathing, loving, living selves. We call these micropauses Hā moments.

The Six x One process is a practice, and a discipline, but those six minutes a day do wonders for rewiring a stressed system and bringing it back into connectivity, nourishment and vitality.

Each Hā moment exercise has three elements to guide and ground you;

• Whakataukī a significant saying, an inspirational statement, quote, or proverb
• Pūmanawa a way to think about our superpowers, the tūpuna ancestor-given
  gifts which each of us have.
• Rongoā a remedy, a treatment, a guidance for your Hā moment.

The principles of Six x One are:

• Commit to giving it a go, suspending judgement of yourself, the practice and the process.
• For each of the six minutes, get off all devices and do something that brings you joy and ease, and connection.
• Use our suggestions to guide your Hā moments if you wish – or find your own pathways to peacefulness.
• Notice what happens in you as you take a minute to nurture yourself

• Whakataukī: Understanding the nervous system is the process of “being safe enough to fall in love with life” - Deb Dana, author, practitioner, speaker, researcher
• Pūmanawa: What helps you orientate to safety, to feel safe enough that you can relax and let life in a little more? Our hononga, connections, are what bring us back into a safe and vital place. For this exercise, bring a taonga into your heart and mind that helps you orientate to your happy place. Connect to a memory or image of an ancestor, a guardian, a maunga, an awa, the moana, a breath, a place that nourishes you, or even Mother Earth herself. These taonga are what help you access your superpowers.
• Rongoā: Use your Hā moment to relax into a state of safe connection and resource. Bring to mind your chosen taonga. Let it help you with whatever you are feeling. Let your body relax into being held by it. Breathe in its special magic, releasing your own stress, breath by breath. Yield and imagine yourself held. Breathe in the connection, the nourishment and enjoy it
  

• Whakataukī: Poipoia te kākano kia puāwai ai. Nurture the seed and it will bloom. We need love and care to nurture and realise our potential.
• Pūmanawa: Our hauora, our wellbeing begins with us, ko au. During the noise of life we forget or misplace the awesomeness of us, sometimes feeling disconnected with ourselves. Through a reflective internal practice we take a pause to remember, consider, acknowledge and celebrate our pūmanawa, our breath. By doing so, we begin or reignite the nurturing of our hauora.
• Rongoā: Take a pen and paper. Close your eyes. Think about your pūmanawa, your superpowers. Listen to what comes to mind. Write down what you find. Each time you do this, you may discover new strengths that you draw on to settle and ground yourself. Kia tau te rangimarie. Outside of your Hā moment, you can extend this process of hononga, connection to your pūmanawa, through journaling.

• Whakataukī: "What frequency have I lost that I cannot hear the tree speak?" - Malidoma Patrice Somé (author and leader)
• Pūmanawa: Your connection to nature, and yourself as nature, is something that is just always there. It is who you are. We are never separate from nature – as humans we are part of the natural world. As we work to reconnect with Papatūānuku, we heal her and ourselves. The ngahere, the forest, and the rākau within it, help connect us to Papatūānuku.
• Rongoā: Wherever you are, go outside. If you can see a tree close by, either imagine you are standing next to each other, or go and stand next to it. If you can, you might want to sit or stand with your spine against the trunk of a tree. Say hello and breathe in the tree and imagine as you breathe out, it breathes you in. Breathe out the tension in your body then sense yourself connecting deeply into the soil and earth, breathing in the tree’s vitality and oxygen. Then take a few breaths breathing out your goodness and letting the rākau feel that and then breathing in the magic and Rongoa of the rākau, their healing essence

• Whakataukī: Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi engari he toa takitini. I come with not my own strengths but bring with me, the gifts, talents and strengths of my family, tribe and ancestors.
• Pūmanawa: We are not alone in this world. We have and carry the many gifts of our tūpuna, our ancestors and our whakapapa. As people of this world we are also intrinsically linked, connected to te taiao, the environment. We know the peace of this connection, this hononga, when we plant our feet within the ngahere, or dip our toes in the moana or an awa. Our waewae, our feet, ground us when we place them in these spaces.
• Rongoā: Hononga, connect, with a rākau. Find a rākau, a piece of wood that you connect with. Ask for permission through karakia and/or words from Papatūānuku to borrow it. Feel it, have a kōrero with it, bring it to your space of mahi and take a moment to place your feet on it. Close your eyes and feel it, feel its mauri, breathe and allow it to ground you, to centre you. Kia tau te rangimarie.

• Whakataukī: "Word by word, stone by stone, leaf by leaf, we return to talking trees, a forest of upright ancestors speaking stories, with terrestrial tongues, holding up the sky." - Dr Karlo Mila
• Pūmanawa: What helps you connect to your body? Your body is a superpower, it is earth, it belongs to Papatūānuku. Your body has mountains and rivers, bones and blood. It can sense out and respond to the world. It has so much wisdom in its different organs and energy centres. When you have that sense of connection between your body and the wider world, you bring a grounded energy into a room, an energy connected to Papatūānuku.
• Rongoā: Go to a tree or picture a tree you love and hold it in your mind. Feel or imagine your feet touching the earth around the tree.
  
  Think of yourself connecting down into the network of roots the ngahere has, an underground network of light. Imagine roots come down through your feet, thousands of small roots and they go through the floorboards and structure of the building you are in, or go outside and stand barefoot on the earth. Imagine or feel your feet touching the earth and then the earth pulsing your roots down into her, lovingly, kilometres down.
  
  The roots become thick and strong and maybe 100 km down they rest in the warm deep earth and give you access to your earth body. Anything can be digested through these roots. Imagine you are sending any feeling or stressful experience that you have been bracing against through your body into the earth. Let her receive it. What the earth receives she turns into soil and compost and returns it to nourish us. Imagine every cell of your body breathes in this nourishment, expands with this energy, releases tension into the earth, refills with nourishment for you, your mahi, your whānau.

• Tongikura: Tongikura a kupu specific to Waikato, to Tainui and is much like a whakataukī, evoking emotion and thought. Kiingi Tawhiao was considered a great prophet and visionary, a leader for his people."Ki te Kowhai te kakaho, ka what I; ki te Kauai, e kore e whati." - Kiingi Tawhiao. If a reed stands alone, it can be broken; if it is in a group, it cannot. When we stand alone, we are vulnerable, but together we are unbreakable.
  
• Pūmanawa: While our wellbeing begins with us caring for ourselves as individuals, an impact wider than ourselves is achieved when we come together with a common purpose and intention. The words of the tongikura make us think of whānau, our tūpuna, the legacy of their contribution and our contribution. When we think about these connections, we become part of something that is greater than ourselves. The tongikura also reminds us of where we draw strength, those places and spaces where we have a deep connection and knowing, and the people who make us feel that we truly belong. Let’s explore, where or who is that for you.
• Rongoā: When the world around you feels overwhelming, it helps to take a moment and take yourself to the people and places that anchor us in a space of belonging, of deep connection and knowing. We cannot always be with these people or in these places, but we can bring them to our minds and hearts to give us strength. For me, this place is the urupā, our cemetery at our marae, the ultimate connection to whenua, tūpuna. Whenua that sits by the moana, under the majestic tūpuna of our maunga, where our ancestors have lived and our people continue to live. Whenua where we sought shelter, that has nourished generations and which carries with it deep connections, knowing and belonging. In times when life and things are feeling unbalanced and wiwi, wawa, remember this place of knowing, connection and belonging and breathe. See it, smell it, taste it, hear it and feel it. Feel it through every part of your tinana, wairua, your everything. Kia tau te Rangimarie.

• Whakataukī: "Our bodies are such places of wisdom and music, you just need to tune in." -Louise Marra
• Pūmanawa: All the systems of our body – cardiovascular, digestive, endocrine hormonal, immune, nervous, respiratory and more all work together without your effort. These systems are constantly trying to harmonise and provide wellbeing for you, sensing into the outside world, te taiao, the weather, the place we are in, and the people we are with. We can learn to connect to this beautiful orchestra and grow our recognition of it.
• Rongoā: Find a piece of music you love that has a good beat. Turn it on and dance your current state. Give it expression through the body. Feel the earth support you and enjoy the moment and the movement. By dancing with whatever is going on for us, we tune into this coherence and help the process of harmonising with the now. You can do this with different pieces of music throughout the day. You can invite someone else in. You could even have your whole office dancing six times a day for one minute. The dance wires joy into your day.

• Whakataukī: Aroha mai, aroha atu. Love received demands love returned. Love others and love will come back to you.
• Pūmanawa: Let this whakatauki make you think about when you last gave love to your tinana?When was the last time you really laughed from the top of your upoko, head, to the tips of your toes. Danced with abandonment? The last time you really listened to your body and the tohu, signs within and its teachings? Often our mind and thoughts override the heart learnings and teachings of our tinana. And our tinana tells us much; when to be nourished, when we need to rest and when we can dance and embrace it. Me whakarongo, listen.
• Rongoā: Record the daily joy of what we received during the day and what did you give in return. What did you do to nourish and bring joy to your tinana? Kia tau te rangimarie.