Creating the space to release emotional and physical pain

I’m a Waikato girl. We moved to Ōhiwa twenty-seven years ago, built a house on family land and settled in. I rely on a peaceful environment; I’m naturally introverted. Ōhiwa is my soul space, it’s my connection space, it’s my resource. It’s a mutual love relationship we have with community around here, and we wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. And we felt it was a really good space to bring children up in. My maternal line is Scottish, and we’re clan people. We love the house full, and we love children. My husband’s father was born down the coast – Ngāti Porou. My daughters have been able to lean into that and find connection to the culture and their whakapapa.

When I was twenty, I had unexplained, debilitating back pain. When I had a flare up, I couldn’t walk – a stuck-in-bed kind of story. No doctor could find anything, and you just end up under this umbrella term of ‘fibromyalgia’. The only thing that helped me manage my pain, and my mind-set around the pain, was yoga. That started my journey.

Kriya is the healing yoga. It’s done slowly, mindfully, with long holds. It’s about cleansing our body, but also our emotional state – squeezing into difficult positions, breathing, and surviving that, then moving on to the next hold. There’s a mental practice to go with that – to allow yourself to be mentally still and quiet while you’re in a difficult position. That talks to life: how to let the stress factors rise in your body, and then calm that into an acceptance state. It’s a practice of contraction to expansion. I think fibromyalgia is a long-term contraction, whether it’s a stress, an anxiety or a wound – something that’s got you quite tight. To create space mentally, emotionally and physically helps soothe the physical symptoms.

I’m a daily practitioner. It might just be a meditation on the beach, or it might mean an hour on my mat. I check in and see how my body is. I can still have little flare-ups, but I deal with it on a daily basis.

When we moved to Ōhiwa, there was no teacher. I jumped on board with an American guy to train, which was a three-year process. I taught yoga in Ōpōtiki and Whakatāne for a very long time. I incorporate my yoga into the  somatic healing work I do now, known globally as Systemic Constellation. When I first saw a systemic constellation circle running, I understood it. I could see how a family system relates to a body or emotion system. Someone tells me they’ve got an issue, and we’re looking for patterns. What’s the repeat? What can’t you solve by yourself? Who else in your whānau has something similar going on? There’s always a link.

When we run a wāhine wānanga, or a ladies’ retreat, I’ll teach little bits of yoga, to give people the tools that worked for me, along with meditation. Working with Māori, the colonisation issue is on the table, and we’re always up for that. My business partner is a beautiful Māori wahine, and we stand together in these decolonisation spaces. We work with wounded warriors (the Māori men or the Celtic men – they carry a lot of wounds) and unsettled settlers (the Pākehā that haven’t fully settled into the land, or the Māori that are displaced from their tribal affiliation). There tend to be patterns that run through whānau that are subconscious.

Why do I do it? I love to see people realising that some of their stuff is bigger than them – it belongs to the family, not to them alone. I get to see our next generations be free of historical blocks and burdens. It’s for my children with blended blood; it’s for my moko; and it’s for the story of humanity. It’s for the evolution of happy, healthy souls.