The Menstruality Podcast - 87. The Magic of Maori Menstrual Wisdom and Rituals (Hinewai Waitoa)

Episode Date: May 11, 2023

Hinewai Waitoa is doing powerful work to reclaim  Maori menstrual wisdom. In her words: “Colonisation took so much of what was magic about Maori culture when it came to things like menstruation practices. We are still reclaiming our sacred ways here in Aotearoa”.Hinewai is a māmā to two unschooled mini beings and the creator of Waikuranuku Indigenous devoted to wholistic womb wellness, reclamation & womb sovereignty. Her reclamation journey has unfolded over the past 15 years and she now lives her life purpose holding space for kōhine - girls, wāhine - women, tāne - men and whānau - families, to reconnect to and understand the natural rhythms and cycles of the womb,  heal inter-generational trauma and create a more nourishing connected loving earth for all living beings. In our conversation we explore:- How Hinewai is currently preparing her tamahine - her daughter - for her menarche rite of passage.- What it means to “speak aroha” - love - into the centre of our beings, and how to work with it as a powerful menstrual practice, and an act of rebellion which creates deep, inner alignment.- What is inside Hinewai’s ‘kete ikura” - her menstrual cycle basket - and how she uses it to keep her anchored into a real, lived honouring of her cycle. ---Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love---The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.schoolSophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardyHinewai Waitoa: @waikuranuku.indigenous_cycles - https://www.instagram.com/waikuranuku.indigenous_cycles

Welcome to the Menstruality Podcast, where we share inspiring conversations about the power of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. This podcast is brought to you by Red School, where we're training the menstruality leaders of the future. I'm your host, Sophie Jane Hardy, and I'll be joined often by Red School's founders Alexandra and Sharni as well as an inspiring group of pioneers, activists, change makers and creatives to explore how you can unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle to activate your unique form of leadership for yourself, your community and the world. Hey there, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you for tuning in today.

So this was a really special conversation for me. I was on one side of the earth at 6am and Hinewai Waitoa was on the other side of the earth in her evening and we had such a gorgeous time together. Hinewai is a Maori woman, she's a mama to two unschooled mini beings and she's the creator of Wai Koranuku Indigenous which is devoted to holistic womb wellness, reclamation and womb sovereignty in her words colonization took so much of what was magic about Maori culture when it came to things like menstruation practices we are still reclaiming our sacred ways here in Aotearoa her reclamation journey has unfolded over the past 15 years and she now lives her life purpose which is holding space for Kohine, girls, Wahine, women, Tane, men and Whanau, families, to connect to and understand the natural rhythms and cycles of the womb, to heal intergenerational trauma and to create a more nourishing and connected loving earth for

all living beings. In the conversation we talk about how Hinewai is currently preparing her daughter for her monarch rite of passage. We speak about what it means to speak aroha, love into the centre of our beings and how it's a powerful menstrual practice. And a fun bit, we hear what's inside Hinewai's Kete Ikura, which is her menstrual cycle basket, and how she uses it to keep herself anchored into a real lived honouring of her cycle. welcome to the podcast Hinewai it's wonderful to have you here it's so beautiful to finally be together we've been weaving through time zones to be able to find our way to each other oh it's so good to be here with you and thank you for making this time and yeah I'm just really excited to have this korero with you this conversation um and speaking to all these beautiful things yeah I'm excited

I could feel the depth of your practice when it comes to your cycle in everything that you share on social media and it's been yeah a real delight to immerse myself in your world over the last few weeks really and I mean where we'll start is where we always start which is where are you at with your cycle today what day you on and how is that feeling for you how is it expressing itself in you today cool so I'm on day three but I'm a bit of all over the place at the moment, which is okay, which is it's teaching me a lot. My bleed was heavy. It was dark. I was like, what's going on for me right now?

What's coming? What am I releasing? What was my past cycle like? So it's a bit of a all over the show and I'm even though it's like that I'm loving it I'm loving just feeling into how my cycle is bringing me into winter because it's winter for us it's coming into winter for us and so I've been actually looking forward to this I've been looking forward to observing my cycle through this next winter after doing a lot of mahi last year on myself.

Yeah, so I'm day three. And so I'm starting to kind of feel, even though I'm like all over the show, I'm starting to feel like I'm coming back into some high energy sort of space. Yeah. Yeah, yeah yeah beautiful were you able to take care of yourself much did did life align for you to have some rest this bleed or how did that how did you negotiate that oh yeah actually it did and I um my masculine drive that wants me to get all the things done sort of calmed himself down a little bit and allowed me to rest. And I was just, every time I was lying down, like today I was lying down in the sun and I had my top up,

letting the sun onto my womb space, onto my belly, and just soaking it in and reminding myself like I often use my nurturing in a mother voice to remind me that it's okay to do this you're allowed to take a moment to let the sun be on your body to let the sun help your cycle to be healthy to let you know to soak that all in and do the nourishing things that you need to be a functional mama to have a functional cycle and to be functional for yourself and you know for myself and everything that I need to do how I need to show up in the world so I was lying in the sun going this is okay I'm allowed to do this now to take this time yes it's so beautiful to hear the

way you're describing your inner world here and I want to give it some time because I know so many people in our community have an edge around this me included so it feels really powerful the way you named there's an inner masculine drive which I really relate to that keeps me doing and moving particularly as I'm coming as I'm deep in my pre-munch drum because that's the time of my cycle where I am creative I know who I am I know what I'm about and I go for it like I'm really maximized that time and that take that builds a lot of momentum so then when often when I need to be slowing down so that I can hear that inner mother voice which is so beautiful the way you describe that

he yeah and I do I do experience inside as like a dominating more masculine energy yeah he is pretty loud so yeah it's lovely to hear that the yeah the kind of the antidote for you is that inner mother voice that helps you to know it's okay to slow down. Yeah, and really cultivating her so that when we are pushing, just slow down, it's okay. You're allowed to take a moment. Just take a moment. And it took me a while to learn to do that because obviously we all live in such a, you know, driven society.

Everyone's functioning like day, night, get things done. And it's like, no, that's not how we're meant to be. We're like the moon. We're like the marama and here in in Aotearoa um we have a lot of focus on maramataka which is our our lunar environment um calendar type the way our yeah the way we track time the way we live it's pretty much like a holistic well-being practice um and so the moon and the environment guide us and today our moon is in okoro which is a time to be creative it's still a time that's the energy of new moon it's a time to set your intentions and all those kind of things it's still a restful nourishing time and so that's allowed me to

I really use maramataka as well to help me honor my cycle and honor myself as a cyclical being and a wound keeper and a mama and to just slow down and remind myself that i'm not a man you know like i've got to respect what is here functioning within within me yeah so yeah I hear you yeah and then yeah the pre-menstrual phase hey we can get into that later although it's topical because I'm on day 22 and I I heard her come in my pre-menstrual kick-ass driven um she's got big dreams for me and she's not afraid to tell everyone about them and to reorganize life so that their lives that I like my husband got quite a heavy dose of her last night and I woke up this morning just very present to oh love it's okay to have big visions for life but I think what isn't okay is for me to throw them at the people that are close to me you know or have really high expectations of others

like I'd rather redirect that energy to have high expectations of myself gently you know yeah so I feel I feel powerful in this phase but I also feel a bit dangerous you know I feel that I can which I'm sure loads of people listening will relate to you know I could make trouble in good ways and bad ways right now so I have to you know stay close to myself yeah do you relate yeah i do also when i get into my premenstrual like after that it's like right okay that's changing this is changing that's not happening anymore i'm like whoa okay this is how i feel and this is what I want to do. Yes. Yeah, the clarity, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, let's harness this. Let's harness this in a gentle way, like you said, and not a cutthroat, cut-through-everything way, which I've experienced doing at times. Yes.

One or two times one or eight thousand times I do have a question around the premenstrual but I'd like to come to it later particularly when it comes to mothering because there's something that beautiful that you shared but I wanted to ask about your menarche how you entered into believing because in one of the posts you shared on instagram you mentioned that your menarche was challenging and that this was really your pathway into this work and could you lead us into it by sharing what you shared at the beginning when we were chatting about feeling a little bit unprepared for this conversation. Oh, yes, yeah. Yeah, so I'm Menak. So today, yeah, I had a big realization around how unprepared I was

for our conversation for our Zoom, as I had shared, and I had previously actually been prepared for it, and then all of a sudden just everything went out like it was gone and then I clicked and I realized this is how I showed up to my menarche my first ever bleed I was just absolutely unprepared and it just and just as I am showing up here like here I am that's how I showed up to my menarche as well I was like whoa here it is okay what do I do and I just clicked into it um so I was 13 I was 13 when I got my first um lead when my ikura first arrived I was away from home I was away from my mama I was away from any aunties, any bigger cousins, female cousins.

I was with my father who I didn't feel comfortable in the space. I was with older brothers. I had no one that I actually felt comfortable with. And my body was telling me something was happening and I didn't know what was going on because I had never really seen for myself no one had shown me the ikura so we call ikura period or menstruation we call menstrual blood or menstruation ikura. Waikura, waifero those all our names for it so I had nobody show me that stuff I never saw my mums I had a one day puberty class when I was 12 or 11 I think and still I didn't really comprehend what was what they were teaching us like we saw this video they showed us pads and stuff and still I was like there was no blood like so not having that

actual proper experience of seeing somebody with the ikura I had no no clue what I was coming into until I saw mine for the first time and so my body had been telling me I was tired I ended up going to sleep waking up in the afternoon going to the toilet and then looking down at my undies and being like whoa that's blood and so I just sat there for a moment and the bathroom the toilet door felt like so far away and everything was just like and I was like oh my goodness I've got my period what the fuck yeah and I sat there for ages and then I ended up going putting wrapping some toilet paper putting that there and like going to get some new kākahu because obviously my clothes had blood on them so my you know my pants and everything was covered in blood and and I was like right okay I remember those things I need pants so I went to ask my dad for some money and he wanted to know

what I wanted it for and I was like I was not comfortable telling him I was not comfortable telling him and I was like I just need to go to the shop and he wouldn't give me any money and oh I don't know how I managed to get some money but I did I think I might have asked one of my brothers and I walked to the shop toilet paper in my undies walked there I was absolutely like horrified at what was going on I felt so alone I felt sick like I was just like what the frick this is awful went to the shop stood there looking at the pads I had no idea what I was supposed to get and yeah it was just it felt like a really traumatic experience for that 13-year-old me. And often I've been blessed with having sisters who have held space for me over the years, reclaiming my cycle, my ikura, my connection with my ikura.

I've been privileged to be in different ceremonies and to have them help for me and and all that kind of stuff but it was yeah at the time yeah I feel I feel I hold my 13 year old self often and I'm like wow you you survived there because that was actually next level yeah yeah and then after that I remember that particular moment like as if it happened yesterday and then everything after that I just can't I don't know how the next few days went it was sort of yeah yeah I mean like you said there it was there was trauma and it sounds like part of you had to disappear for a little bit to be able to cope with it yeah yeah yeah and now you're actually just helping me realize

something now that that was the moment that I really disassociated yes oh that's a beautiful realization. Cool. Yeah. And then after that, it was navigating heavy period, you know, heavy ikura, pains. I ended up in hospital at the age of 14. And they had sent me away and told my nanny at the time that I needed to tell my mum to take me to the doctor and all that kind of stuff so it was sort of it was quite a blurry experience but I ended up on contraceptives after that yeah that was their solution and yeah I wish like everything I know now I wish I hadn't known back then yeah yeah I think so many people have had that experience and there's often a shadowiness around it all because the cultural collective shame I'm not sure in your Maori culture if how

the shame exists if and how it exists in my culture there is so much shame so it's all hidden and pushed down and we don't talk about it so you're experiencing all these physical painful difficult things but there isn't necessarily a context to be able to understand them so you've got the double suffering of the actual physical suffering and then the cognitive dissonance of trying to figure out what's going on yeah how was it for you in in your culture around that um so back when I was that age it was still a very hidden thing obviously I didn't know you know like many of us didn't know when we came into it it was a shock you know keep know, keep it, like, here's your pads, go do your thing. You know, if a wahine or if a kōhine, a young girl went to her mama,

it was always a hidden thing and shame, like, ooh, got your period. And just, yeah, and that, for Māori culture, like, for us as Māori back before colonisation, our menstrual cycle was so sacred like wahine woman who cycled and bled were like ultimately sacred and held in high regard like our blood was so powerful it is so powerful but they knew that and they honored that like our people now ancestors they honored the blood the sacred blood and when colonization happened well that just went all out the door and it was like a slow progress like process of just stripping away the things that we honored until we had nothing that really held our well-being.

Like to us that bliss was well-being, it continued our whakapapa line which is our genealogy and that was important to our tīpuna. Like so the whare tangata, so whare being the house tangata being a person, that our womb and everything to do with our womb was absolutely honoured. And so when colonisation happened, the stripping away of everything, that's when, you know, things like that started becoming yucky and then fast-track to when I was younger at 13, you know, that's what we have.

We had a whole bunch of youth not being able to connect and honor their cycle and even know what was happening um these days we're doing there's a lot of um people there's a lot of wahine who have done a lot of work over the years like over the past 20 years to really start reclaiming they've written books they've done theses they've like really started to bring up our culture and like give back to us what we should have had and it's helping all of us to heal so there's there's wahine before me that have done and are still doing the most amazing mahi um one being Ngahuia Murphy and she's written two books um there's one called Waifero um and Te Awa Atua is her other one based

on her thesis and those for us as Maori will be one of our main go-to resources for reclaiming because she's done that work and it's allowed us, like Mama, like myself, to step in as well and start to do our mahi from our lived experiences. So everything that I do is from my lived experience and from those who I journey with. So, yeah, we're doing really good, I feel, to reclaim and to honour what our tipuna used to honour, how they used to honour our cycles. It's beautiful to hear the way you speak of it.

And of course, it should never have happened, this destruction. But to feel the power of the reclamation that's happening in you and in the wahine in all the women who have been doing the work it's it's incredibly moving you wrote yeah we're still reclaiming our sacred ways here in our our te aroa yeah our te aroa our te aroa yeah colonization took so much of what was magic about Maori culture when it came to things like menstruation practices. And I've had a look at the books that you spoke about, Te Awa Atwa, and I'd like to get a copy so I can look more deeply into it and read more and learn more but yeah how fantastic that this work is happening and I guess I'm curious about what the reclaiming is looking like for you at the moment what's alive for you right now with this process for myself personally it's just living my rituals

every day living my rituals honoring and not being ashamed of you know how we do speaking to things like say if somebody asked me how are you now i'm like oh i'm just feeling it you know i speak into it as if it's a absolutely normal thing because it is it's it's a part of life so speaking into these um you know honoring and honoring it by speaking into it and not hiding it so I'm a very big on not hiding anything if I've got my ikura everyone around me is gonna know and I'm not ashamed and making sure that i speak into my children as well my son my daughter um and just sharing every time i'm on my ikura i'm always sharing things with them like whatever's coming up whatever they can receive at the moment as i'm journeying through each day i usually have a

five-day cycle so if i need something like it's just simple things for me like if I need something like a pad like I'll ask my boy to get it and so that he knows you know and for me that's that's that's the kind of reclaiming um I want to be working on because if they're comfortable and they're okay you know with this way of being then I'm going to be able to show them all the next things like the ceremonies and which they've all been a part of as well so yeah it's the question again yeah I can't remember I'm just fascinated by what you're saying I'm just thinking of your daughter then like say if she was only with her brothers when she does start her period it will be a very different experience for the one you had because you are preparing your son and your daughter to understand

what's happening so hopefully she will feel safe to ask him and to get his support so that's generational healing right there in action yeah it is and he knows what to do too if she ever you know if i'm not ever around they both know you know to let the adult know that they're worth that it's okay and you know just to support each other they know what you know she knows what she needs she'll need a pad like and it's okay don't freak out like just navigate it as you can and hold that space for each other and they're always around adults that are that are safe for them so all the people that are in our lives know that sage is starting to come to that time um in her you know in her being as well and i make sure of that that all the people around her also know

that this is what's happening for her right now so we all speak into it so that yeah when the time comes it's not like I've got nobody safe like she she knows she'll be safe and that's the main thing for me is that I don't want her to go through what I went through yeah yeah that safety is so key because it's such a huge moment so to be wrapped in safety she can get the gold from the moment right there rather than having to heal and find it later yes and arrive a prepared just so that she can embrace it and yeah like you said get the gold and be like, yes, this is actually amazing. Yeah. How was it for you when you found the work of,

could you say the name again, Dr Nahuah Murphy? Oh, Ngahuia, Ngahuia Murphy. What was it like to discover her work and to start to immerse yourself in this? How did it feel? feel oh it was beautiful so I actually started doing my my ikura healing journey before I found her mahi I didn't know she actually did any of that or existed because I kind of went the other path then because I'm also part Irish part Scottish so I sort of went down that road I was like oh cool I'm gonna go down here and do some ceremonies this way and I knew you know

some of Te Ao Māori stuff and I took that with me and journeyed in my own way through what I knew in Te Ao Māori. I think I experienced Jane Hardwick Colling's workshop here before I even learnt about Ngāhui's books. So I got to have all those different experiences, full moon circles where we would speak into our saiku. And yeah, so my reclaiming journey actually started before that. And it was in that journey that I ended up meeting a sister. And she was like, oh, have you read this book? And then hands me this waifero.

And I was like, oh my gosh, what is this? This is amazing. And that's when I discovered Ngahuia's mahi and oh just absolute she's absolutely amazing she's absolutely amazing and has done so much for Te Ao Māori and for Wahine and just reading through a lot of the stuff I was like yes I do that oh my gosh and it made me feel like I was on the right path like especially with the reclaiming te ao maori stuff because a lot of the time we're channeling things through and thinking far is this is this okay I don't even know and you're asking aunties and but she went and she just did

a whole bunch of research and yeah it makes you feel held like I know when I've got them right here yeah it's beautiful and this one I've handed on to my um handed down to my girl um and I know when I got this I just felt so held like as a Maori wahine I mean I felt held previously in all the other spaces that I had journeyed in with different sisters and in ceremony and but when I found this I was like wow I feel held in Te Ao Māori now and yeah just it felt so good so I know I know a lot of other wahine feel like that as well just being able to experience this and that's why we do a lot of other wahine feel like that as well, just being able to experience this. And that's why we do a lot of the work that we do, because we want all the wahine here to be able to access these spaces,

have a space to be held, and everyone's calling for it. Yeah, a lot of wahine are ready for it now. People don't want the shame of you know that the stigma that comes with it we want to just get rid of that and start healing so that our tamariki don't have to and I feel like this is this is where we shift the paradigm like this is where we make the biggest change because if wahine are honoring themselves you know like there's gonna be so much that stops happening because we're honoring ourselves now now we're caring about ourselves and that means that people have to care about us too we don't put ourselves in in situations that don't that dishonor us yeah like I've spent so many years before I started reclaiming my cycle which I started before I had my first daughter and which was in 2010 I decided

I needed to get off the depot because I needed to you know start to reclaim my cycle so that I could have a baby I wanted to be a mama I wanted to heal because I knew that the injection the contraceptive injection was messing me up and yeah so yeah I just got I've got full body shivers of recognition to feel the way you're speaking about this and to feel how all over the world this reclaiming is happening and being woven and the way you describe the potential of it as in when we take care of ourselves then the world will follow yeah but that's that and that's the leadership piece here with the cycle it's it's not about i'm going necessarily could be but it's not about i'm going to go and be the president of the country and change change the world in that way and lead that way it's the leadership that comes

from inside that says this is who i am this is what i need and then the world can't help but follow that because of the power inside of it yeah definitely and it drops us into that deep honoring a not just of ourselves as wahine as cyclical beings but when we start to love ourselves recognize that we're living beings oh you can look outside now and recognize wow i cycle just like the tai ao like mother earth papatuanuku like I can love her a little bit more now you know and then there's just this whole I'm trying to describe what I can see you're doing a great job I think we're all feeling it with you I'm feeling it with you yeah yeah and that's why I love I love everyone's mahi like I never see

competition I never I see you've got a cool space you've got a cool space like we're all doing this mahi so that we can all come into a beautiful nourishing space like and I really feel the potential of this like that's so possible for like the whole earth to heal through everyone's mahi like mahi work that we're doing you know to reclaim to honor to nourish to just all the things and if we just all keep doing it that's why i love i only just recently last year came across the wild power book and as soon as i saw it I saw it on someone's post and I was like what is that you see the blood on the cover you're like oh my gosh it's magical I need it and then straight away I ordered it and I was like oh my gosh this is the best book ever

and so I just and I'm terrible at reading books. I kind of just use them like oracles. And I just flip through it and I just allow Wairua, which was like spirit, to guide me to whatever page, you know. And it's always just got some goodness. Yeah. So I always recommend this. Always recommend that book.

And I always carry that on with me because I feel like I just need to be held by it sometimes yeah so mine's always on my desk just touch it oh yeah okay we're okay yeah yeah yeah just touch it I do that too they did like we um it's the fifth birthday of the book this month and so we're celebrating a bit yeah and I just interviewed Alexander and Shani last week and they were sharing that one of their intentions as they were writing would be that the book would serve as they didn't use this word but as a kind of anchor that when people held it they would feel loved and supported and that's exactly what we're talking about isn't it you know and it does do that for people and you do like for our listeners she's hugging the she's hugging the book right now yeah to her heart it just feels like you can feel the

good modi so modi is energy and you can just feel that nourishing Modi, you know, in every page of the book. I've actually slept with this book under my pillow as well. It's magic. It's the magic of the book here. I'm going to pause this wonderful conversation for a moment to share an invitation for you if you run your own business your cyclical business the program I created for Red School to support coaches teachers he lives creatives to create a thriving business by following the wisdom of the menstrual cycle is coming up again and we're hosting a webinar how your menstrual cycle can support you to create a thriving business

on Thursday May the 25th at 4pm UK time so that's 11am in New York. So this is just a save the date notice for now if you're interested in joining us we'd love to have you with us and we'll tell you more about your cyclical business soon okay let's get back to this conversation we're in Hinaway one of the things I really wanted to ask you about is your Kete Ikura Kete Ikura because I've seen some Instagram posts with pictures of it yeah and I'd love to hear about the practice of creating a kete ikura and what's inside it and how it serves you cool yeah so I thought um I just love kete so our k, I've got mine here. Our kete are beautiful taonga that we use for many different things in te ao Māori.

And I knew that I needed to have something to remind me, because I was so, like my masculine energy gets very carried away. So I needed something to remind me to my to honor my cycle so I thought this is going to be my kete for my wāikura I'm going to put everything in here that I need not just for when I bleed but for my whole cycle to remind me to take that time through each phase through each part of my cycle each moon to just stop to nourish to remember what this part means for me what do I need to do and to also make sure that I prepare you know for my when I'm coming into my bleed as well so I put things just your basic things like creams, hot water bottle, my books, journal, candles, tea.

Sometimes I have my steaming stuff in there, yoni steaming. We have plants like arungoa, which is our medicinal plants, kohekohe. So I have kohe so i have in there um i'll have taonga as well which are our sacred um musical instruments that are made out of natural things and so i'll usually have some of those in there and it just changes every time as well but yeah i i had this i've had it for years like I've been doing it for years and then I realized okay I need to actually put this out and share it I would share it with my sisters but I thought okay this is actually a good thing for wahine to create for themselves so that they can remember to honor themselves so I put it out there, like, okay, let's all make our kete ikura.

And so over the time, a lot of sisters have been making their kete ikuras up and then posting up their things, and it's been cool to just have, you know, something that anchors us into honouring our saiko. Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly the word I was feeling as you were talking. Yeah. So that was the whole purpose of it. And from there I've kind of woven together a wānanga,

which is like a sacred school of learning, a space where we come together and we just navigate through learning things and do practices and rituals and all that kind of stuff some people might call it a workshop but so that's where we started weaving together this wānanga to actually bring wahine together and for them to journey more deeper into learning about the cycle like the hormones the you know what we should be doing or what we can be doing not should be but can be doing to honor our cycle and just take them through a full journey so that they can integrate that within themselves so we're looking at doing that after Matariki which is our

our Maori new year um in winter time we'll be running our first yeah our first wananga so it's gonna be really that's so exciting yeah wow i've got so many questions just the first thing was you said it's a tonga which is is that the word for basket oh taonga so taonga taonga taonga. Taonga. Taonga. Taonga. Yeah. So taonga is like something that's special or sacred to us, like something that's really like, this is a taonga. I'm going to describe for the listeners what you're showing me. So I'm seeing the necklace around your neck, yeah, with a stone inside.

Yes, so that's a Labradorite so one of my sisters made this beautiful piece so we'd call something like this a taonga but anything that's special um like our kete's they're special to us no matter what they're used for be it kai which is food or our kete kura or anything that a kete is is useful like it's a taonga to us it's made of aroha it's woven with wisdom anything can be a taonga our children our tamariki are our taonga as well it's beautiful to feel the sacredness that is woven throughout your life and the way you live your life and see the world so is ketete is that the word that mean that would mean basket yeah kete yeah yes thank you um you mentioned the word aroha and I saw in one of your

sharings that part of your practice I think particularly when you're bleeding is to speak aroha into yourself or into your body could you say more about that as a practice so um simply aroha is translated into love um the essence of love but aro means to focus and ha is the breath and so for us in te ao maori our breath like the energy of our heart is is ultimately sacred it keeps us living and ha being the energy that we share out where we focus our energy so for me giving aroha to myself and focusing that into my womb into my whole being it just helps me to make sure that I'm staying aligned make sure that I'm honoring myself and there's like it's like with love I like that pure vibration of love that comes from that divine

source that the love that we actually all are when we give that to ourselves and we acknowledge that's what we are and we allow that to circulate like that in itself is just it's just healing when we call in the aroha from our tipuna, from our ancestors, and we allow their aroha to move through us, it's one of the most healing things that I know of. And it's so simple, like giving our breath back to ourselves with mindful breathing. Such a great description of giving our breath back to ourselves.

Just taking that moment, hey, like, you know, we don't slow down enough to do that. Society is just like, wants to take our breath pretty much, you know, take, take, take our breath away. You know, everything takes our breath away. But slowing down and giving yourself aroha giving yourself that grace and giving your heart your breath back to yourself so that you can be a functional human being yeah it's a real small but huge act of rebellion is to say instead of giving my breath to the world i take this moment

to give my breath to myself it's an act of resistance to as you spoke to earlier to look to a world and a culture that can try and turn us into machines for production when we're actually sacred beings and that's a good way to actually put aroha as well it is like an act of rebellion because when you give it to others, you know, actual genuine aroha, you know, you're choosing in this moment to share aroha with someone, share it with yourself. Oh, gosh, I could talk to you all day.

I just had a couple more questions that I know I wanted to ask. I'd love to speak to and you mentioned some of these things but to give it some more space to how you're preparing your tamahine your daughter cool yeah so I'm preparing my my tamahine by just doing the same things that I do for myself where I've handed her the book the Waipiro book um I speak into my cycle every single time even through like through my whole cycle I'll let them know what's going on I'll let her know what's going on I'll speak into the hormones um just everything that I can we're preparing her her very own kete ikura and so we're starting to put that together so she's got one that's exactly like mine exactly this huge

and I pondered on this for like a whole two years like do I just put it all together and then give it to her at her ceremony or do I allow her to be a part of the process and I thought I feel like it makes more sense for her to be a part of the process and you know to gather the things herself so that she can really arrive to her rite of passage like completely prepared like she knows she put the kete together herself you know she she put the kete together herself. You know, she's put the creams in there. She's got everything that she wants for that time. Like, it's not something that I've put together. It's something I've helped her put together. And so we're going through that process at the moment

and allowing, you know, all my sisters and her aunties and other wahine that she feels safe with to be a part of the process as well and and share so that she really builds this like yeah this is cool like my aunties are gifting me things to go into my into my kete and so when she looks in there she'll see a kete full of sacred taonga that have that she's chosen that you know some of her aunties have given her and it's going to be like this amazing thing that's going to hold her every time her ikura comes so that you know because when you're young one minute I'm a child and the next minute like I'm still a child but now I've got like this blood like yeah

psychologically spiritually too there's so much to negotiate in that time and you know like you said you needed to go and then get a pad for the first time but you had never seen the pads before so not only are you negotiating this huge transition but you have to learn all of this stuff at the same time and we know that when we're in trauma or when we're in a big process of transformation we can't really learn as well our brains aren't you know functioning optimally in that way so the fact that she is learning all of this now means that she can give herself to the process that's happening rather than be scrambling for information yeah and trying to survive it eh trying to survive and she'll just be she won't be surviving it she'll just be like right cool I've got my kete it's got my ikura undies in it it's got pads if I choose I

don't want to wear my undies you know it's she can just you know and we build through that so we speak into a lot of things. So it's been my main focus lately is just speaking into everything with her. And so oftentimes she'll come to me and she'll share how she's feeling. And we're noticing, you know, her moods are changing. She's getting more bigger emotions. And so we're just going through all of that stuff. It's really basic things, stuff it's really basic things they

just really basic things and then once that comes we'll be going dropping into ceremonies and which she knows she knows and she's always like oh who's gonna be there like whoever you want it's all about you whatever you want it, it's going to be your day. We can have whatever you want to eat. Oh, lovely. It's going to be such a great day. Because I was blessed before I got my kowai moko. I just want to jump in here with a note. When Hinewai says kowai moko,

she's speaking about the sacred markings on her lips and her chin which wahine Maori, Maori women receive and which represents her whanau, her family, her leadership within her community, it recognizes her status and her abilities and I actually chatted with Hinewai about this after our conversation and she explained to me that receiving the kowai moko was once a girl's rite of passage around the time of her menarche, her first period, before colonization. It was one of the very first things that was taken from the Maori. It was given to girls when they were 15 or 16 as a kaitiaki, a guardian, for their journey into womanhood. So the ritual that Hinewai is going to speak about now was created for her by her community before she received her kawaii moko, so she could step into receiving it as she originally would have been able to.

I wanted to have a menak reclaiming ritual ceremony so I had a few sisters actually do that for me and set up the whole house and all of outside and we spent a night reclaiming like going through as if I was the 13 yearyear-old me who had just first started bleeding. We had a bonfire. We had a sacred circle. They told stories. I got to speak about my experience coming into that rite of passage and what I wanted to experience and what I wanted to reclaim.

And at the end of it it so we did all these beautiful rituals at the end I had to go outside to the bonfire they had some red paint and like a little tub thing I had to write on this paper put it in the fire, let that go, stand in the red paint, and I had to walk the red thread into the darkness, so I had to walk around the house into the front door, the paint was just going everywhere, walked through, and into the room that we were in, they had lined the entrance with a whole lot of fabrics to make it look like a vagina and it was so cool like a like get like a vulva so I walked through and they were on the other side there patting me down greeting me with aroha and welcoming me into wahine tanga and that was my, and I felt the transition.

I actually felt the transition from my 13-year-old self, boom, into my woman self. And so, yeah, after that they sat me down on this beautiful throne that they had made and they gave me a facial and they were rubbing my feet and I was like, oh, my gosh. We did a meditation and then we had Kai and it was a whole few hours of honouring me. And I was like, every girl should have this. This is amazing.

Yes. Yeah, so I'm going to create a version that my girl feels comfortable with and that she wants to do, you know, with all the people that she feels safe with. So I want that for her. I mean, with all the people that she feels safe with so I want that for her. I mean firstly wow that ceremony wow like what what sisters you have that is epic I'm so glad that you had that and then the other piece that you brought feels really important that yeah the ceremony that you have for your daughter will be for her what she needs and designed around her I think sometimes people can feel like they have to craft something and make something

and the girl can feel a bit resistant to it because it's not truly what she wants you know I've heard this from some of my friends and we've chatted on the podcast about it so yeah the importance of tailoring it to them to what they need and want is key isn't it yeah and it's cool way to have them apart and that's why I thought having her a part of the initial getting everything ready process was important so that she can feel comfortable to come into that space knowing that she's actually woven that with us. Yeah. Beautiful. I want to ask you about something that you wrote recently about feeling triggered when you're premenstrual, when you're approaching your ikura,

especially around your kids and how you're managing being triggered as a mama in this phase of the cycle. Maybe you could give some of your top tips for how to manage this right now asking for a friend yes oh being triggered so I speak into it a lot with my babies and I remind them that okay mama's coming up to her bleed now I'm needing a little bit more space um I need to just take this moment and sometimes it's her bleed now. I'm needing a little bit more space.

I need to just take this moment. And sometimes that's hard for them because I'm solo, mama. They have whānau around them, but, you know, they both need a lot of my attention. And when it comes to that time, I'm like, oh, shit, man, I'm already at full capacity. I, like, just need some time to just, I really just want to sit in nature and just not talk to any human beings sometimes. But I've got these babies that I've got to look after.

And I'd speak to them about those things. Like I'd tell them, I just need some time right now. And sometimes they take it to heart and they can't handle it, but I still take their time because I know that I can show up better for them if I just take a moment and yeah just do a lot of grounding outside usually I'll take them out with me if you need to come outside with mum I'm gonna go and do this this is what I need to do right now because I'm gonna be bleeding soon and if I don't listen to my tinana my body right now then you're going to have a very grumpy mum yeah that's it that's the truth yes so just taking them to do those things with me um usually sometimes they

will come or they'll be like oh no I'm going to go play with Legos okay then and then I'll go and you know do those little things that I need to do to bring myself, keep myself centered. And just, yeah, sharing with others around me as well. I, like, I'll let my sister know I'm coming up to my Ikura soon, or, you know, so that we can all start to support each other better. Or, like, you know, support each other in those moments. And it seems to, yeah, it's getting better and better and better me too it's good to celebrate that and to see that that it is getting better and better

yeah how can people connect with you um connect with your work support your work as well um just by following us on instagram and social media, I guess. We're slowly starting to put together a website. I'm one of those people that I have to be the one doing the thing. But yeah, just on social media. Yeah, good old social media. I mean, it's riddled with with problems but it's also such a great connecting tool you know it's yeah the fact I know about you because of Instagram you know that's how

I discovered your work because I was following someone who's following you and then I found your work that way so but yeah and we're just going to be posting up things on there that's because I'm really terrible at social media um but when things come up we just post it up there and that's what it's worth because I'm my whole thing is business and supporting people to bring their cyclical wisdom into their their business and their work and I think the way you use social media is great oh thank you truly and I'm not no bullshit this is real that you share from your heart and you really invite us into your world in a way that made me feel really connected to you and to your work and I personally feel that that's

the best use of social media not posting all the time with just random information but waiting until you have something really meaningful to share. So congrats. I think your way of using social media is awesome. Thank you so much. That's so good to hear because normally I'm like, oh my goodness, do I need to be posting every day? I can't just think of random things.

I need to wait till it's in my heart. Yeah, I can feel that. I can feel that and it comes through great and I'll also put a link to the two books that you've shared and yeah and we will once you have your website let me know and then we can link to that too in the the show notes for the podcast yeah thank you so much for everything that you're doing for the reclaiming that you're doing for the wisdom that you're sharing and for the reclaiming that you're doing, for the wisdom that you're sharing, and for the way you move through the world.

It's really beautiful to encounter. Thank you. Thank you. And same to you. Thank yous for all your mahi. Yeah, it's just so beautiful. And it's very, very grateful for all your mahi and your podcast.

I've been listening to some of the podcasts that you've done it's just like oh my gosh I needed this so yeah thank you so much and I hope you have a beautiful rest of the day thank you thank you love thank you for joining us again today I hope this conversation was as nourishing for you as it was for me thank you for being part of the community listening to this podcast if you haven't yet please subscribe and leave us a review on apple podcast that really supports us and I look forward to being with you again next week and until then keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm