I presented last week the image of a young girl who, at two years old, could not understand why she became invisible when her sibling arrived. ‘Wasn’t she enough?’. I left that article with questions around how that weed could be pulled out, and stopped from reseeding or transferred to other aspects of her life and more importantly, to her children.
I present the closing conversation.
What Pulls the Weed Out?
This is the question that led me to develop Te Poutama o te Ora (TPO) — the nine-dimensional Māori wellness framework that sits at the heart of my work as a counsellor, supervisor, and wellness practitioner.
My thinking is this: if the weed lives in the mind — in the brain’s neural pathways, in the beliefs formed before we had words — then uprooting it requires something equally deep. We must pull the metaphysical into the physical. We must bring the spiritual into Te Ao Mārama — the world of light and understanding.
Within TPO, anxiety as a weed is approached through several of our nine dimensions:
• Taha Hinengaro (Mental & Emotional Wellness): identifying and naming the root belief — giving it a whakapapa so it can be examined rather than just endured.
• Taha Wairua (Spiritual Wellness): understanding the larger story of your worth — one that does not depend on childhood Christmas mornings or office politics.
• Taha Whānau (Relational Wellness): healing the relational wounds that first told you that you were invisible.
• Taha Tinana (Physical Wellness): releasing the anxiety stored in the body, because the nervous system holds the history that the mind has tried to forget.
• Taha Tuakiri (Identity Wellness): letting go of what is not yours — that you have always been good enough.
But the work does not stop at the individual. Because anxiety — particularly the “not good enough” variety — is not just personal. It is colonial. It is intergenerational. It carries the weight of systems that were designed to make us feel exactly this way.
Te Ao Māori Offers Something Different
Indigenous knowledge has always understood the interconnectedness of past, present, and future. Whakapapa is not just a genealogical record — it is an explanatory system. It allows us to trace the origins of our experiences, to name them, and in naming them, to begin releasing them.
When we apply whakapapa thinking to anxiety, we stop asking “what is wrong with me?” and start asking, “what happened to me, and what has been happening to people like me, for generations?” That shift — from self-blame to contextual understanding — is itself a form of healing.
The Maramataka — the Māori lunar calendar — also has something to offer. It reminds us that growth is seasonal. That there are times for planting, times for tending, and times for harvest. Healing from deep-rooted anxiety is not a sprint. It is a cultivation.
My Life Is One of Growth Now
And yet, some weeds still surface. I want to be honest about that. Healing is not a moment of arrival. The work is ongoing.
But I also know this: You move beyond the two-year-old not understanding why their world has changed, or the adult who questions why this keeps happening.
You can be the person who took that pain but built something from it. For me, it was a framework, a ministry, a way of walking alongside others as they pull their own weeds.
That is what TPO is. Not a theory. A testimony.
If this resonates with you, I would love to hear your story.
What was the moment the weed was planted in your garden?
Next in the series: When Debt Became Love
Te Poutama o te Ora | Nine Dimensions of Māori Wellness
The thoughts of not being good enough stem from that time when you first felt anxiety about being inadequate, or you faced a situation in life that you said you couldn’t handle, and you reasoned this to be – “It’s because I’m not Good Enough”.
If I then proposed that:
Anxiety is a weed, with the root of that weed stemming from a dysfunctional belief or thought.
Further, if it is a thought, then it likely can’t be medicated.
Instead, you must train your brain to think differently and replace that belief with something else that is positive and true, or the old belief will return.
This is not about chanting positive affirmations – it is about retraining your brain, the neuropathway that was set in place all that time ago when you accepted the anxiety of inadequacy – when the ‘weed’ was planted.
When did it start?
I can trace it back to when I was two years old, to my sister’s birth. At first, I didn’t understand why they needed her…Wasn’t I enough!!. Of course, at two years old, it’s all about you. Neighbours and relatives came around. We were poor, so my mum had my sister in the washing basket. I remember thinking what’s going to happen with the washing now.
The weed was planted.
Again, I didn’t understand what all of the fuss was about with this little person in a washing basket. I remember trying to remove my sister from my doll’s bed, Mum came in and was furious….I said, “This is my doll’s bed’, a spanking followed. It wasn’t against the law in those days to hit your children.
The re-minding moments of not being good enough continued, no longer getting the better presents at Christmas. My own really good things being given to my sister, my dresses, when there was something special to go to, how her hair would be fussed over, and my hair was pulled up into a bun. I felt like a school matron at 7.
The weed was watered and nurtured.
I tried my best to be a good child…but as other siblings arrived, all that happened was that I became invisible.
Then, as if by order, other situations reinforced this ‘loss’. My parents often forgot about me, and I found out I was missed from family trips…their reason being they forgot. I remember spending days at my aunties, brought home at dinner time…for my father to ask, “Where have you been?”
I had been gone the whole day, and I walked for an hour to get to my aunt’s home.
Probably the worst reminder of ‘not being good enough’ was one time Christmas shopping with my Mother as a teenager, and she brought a present for my sister. My mum’s reason was that my sister had been a really good girl that year. When Christmas day came, and we got to the presents under the tree…there wasn’t anything for me. My aunt and cousin arrived later that day, and I got a present from my cousin that I treasured. It was beautiful and a blue top with a white band…I wore that as much as I could. Mum’s actions told me that Christmas that ‘I wasn’t good enough’.
The weed became strong and multiplied.
Then there was knowing at school that you weren’t going to be chosen by other students…dreading athletics and sports fixtures. Thankfully, I wasn’t bullied at school. I was clever, and as Māori, the other students treated me as if my success were their own… they still didn’t choose me for games or to be on their teams.
That weed planted at two years old was nurtured and grew over the years, to where I came to expect it. Trying to stand out as the good child, excelling at my education, getting prizes to show ‘hey I am good enough…’ but there was never that celebration.
The weed was now a forest.
The feelings of exclusion or being set apart followed me into my working life…although that was also combined with being the token Māori, so it became a bit more complicated. Isolated from team decisions or ignored during meetings when I was clearly upset, with one time my leaving the room to cry in the bathroom.
Not getting that promotion even when you are more qualified than the successful person. Having to reapply for your own job, only to find you have to train the new person, and then hearing later that the new person actually didn’t know anything about your old job. They were put there by the senior manager who needed you gone.
I am still plagued by that anxiety when I have a management one-on-one meeting, as my work history has taught me these sessions are used to discipline or ‘correct’ a behaviour and ‘insert’ a more acceptable one.
Although my life now is one of success and growth…these ‘weeds’ still surface. How can I retrain my brain to think differently…what or how can modern thinking be utilised to ‘pull that weed out’ for good!…cut that forest down and turn the land back into good soil.
Where to from here?
My thinking tells me that – if the ‘weed’ is in my brain, then I need to ‘pull it out’ and replace that belief with one that is ‘true’ and ‘real’.
The principle of – pulling the ‘metaphysical’ into the physical world, bringing the spiritual into Te Ao Marama.
What does that look like?
Also, how far is the concept of Anxiety being a weed, translated to other supposed causes of anxiety?
What does indigenous knowledge offer, and how does this fit Te Poutama o te Ora?
Think of the last thing you really wanted. Maybe it was something you saw online; something a friend mentioned; it’s been sitting in the back of your mind for months — a holiday, a purchase, a version of your life that looks a little different from the one you’re living.
Now here’s the deeper question: where did that wanting come from?
In te Ao Māori, we have a concept called whakapapa. Most people know it as genealogy — the tracing of family lines, the recitation of ancestors, the understanding of where we come from. But whakapapa is also a method of understanding anything deeply. To know the whakapapa of something is to know its origins, its lineage, the forces that shaped it into what it is.
Within our Te Poutama o te Ora framework, we apply this same principle to our desires (wants). We call it tracing the whakapapa of desire — and it might just be one of the most liberating practices you ever try.
We Are Swimming in Manufactured Want
Here is something worth sitting with: in 2023, the global advertising industry spent close to one trillion dollars — not to inform you, but to make you want things. To make you feel, at some quiet level, that what you currently have is not quite enough. That the life you’re living is a slightly lesser version of the one you could be living, if only you had this product, this programme, this look, this experience.
This is not conspiracy thinking — it is simply the business model. Your dissatisfaction is the product. Your longing is the engine.
And it works. Not because we are weak or foolish, but because we are human. Our brains are wired to want. The same neurological system that once motivated our ancestors to seek food, shelter, and belonging — a genuinely life-saving impulse — is now activated hundreds of times a day by systems designed precisely to exploit it.
The neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky points out that the dopamine surge in the brain is actually larger in anticipation of something than in the receiving of it. We are, biologically, built for wanting more than for having. In a world that understood this and worked with our flourishing in mind, this would be channelled beautifully. In a world of consumer capitalism, it becomes a vulnerability.
The Colonisation of Your Inner Life
In Te Poutama o te Ora, we speak often about colonisation — not only as a historical and political reality, but as something that can happen to our inner lives. Just as tangata whenua experienced the occupation of their lands and the suppression of their language and ways of knowing, each of us can experience the occupation of our desires.
When the wanting that fills our days comes primarily from outside us — from what we see others have, from what advertising tells us we should aspire to, from the story we were handed about what constitutes a successful or sufficient life — our desires are not our own. They have been colonised.
This is not a blame game. The forces shaping our wants are enormously powerful and often invisible. But naming them is the beginning of freedom.
Moana Desire and Ngaru Desire
When we trace the whakapapa of our desires, we often find two kinds of wanting.
Moana – desire rises from depth. Like the deep ocean, it is quietly insistent, connected to something real in you — a genuine need for connection, for meaning, for growth, for belonging, for expression. When you follow moana desire, you tend to feel more yourself, alive, and aligned. This kind of wanting has roots.
Ngaru desire, by contrast, rises from the surface — it is wave-like, stirred up by external forces. It arrives with urgency, smells like comparison and speaks in the voice of:
‘I need to keep up’
‘I’ll feel better about myself if I have this’
‘Everyone else seems to have figured something out that I haven’t’.
Ngaru – desire is not inherently wrong — waves are part of the ocean’s life. But when we mistake them for the deep current, we spend enormous energy chasing what will not ultimately feed us.
The invitation is not to eliminate desire — desire is life-force, it is energy, it is what moves us through the world. The invitation is to know which kind you’re holding.
How to Trace the Whakapapa of a Desire
This is a reflective practice. It works well in a journal, in conversation with someone you trust, or simply as a quiet inquiry on a walk.
Pick something you currently want. Something you find yourself thinking about, longing for, maybe working toward. Then sit with these questions:
When did this wanting first appear in me? What was happening in my life at that time?
Who or what introduced me to this desire? Was it my own discovery — or was it shown to me?
What does this desire promise me? What do I believe I will feel when I have it?
What genuine need sits beneath this specific want? Could that need be met another way?
If I imagine having this thing fully, and still feeling empty — what then would I want?
You do not need to arrive at a tidy answer. The purpose of these questions is not to tell you whether to want something or not. It is to restore your capacity to choose. To make you the author of your own wanting, rather than the recipient of someone else’s agenda.
This Is a Practice of Sovereignty
Tino rangatiratanga — self-determination — is one of the most cherished principles in te ao Māori. It refers to the right of Māori to govern themselves, to be the authority over their own lives and futures.
Within Te Poutama o te Ora, we extend this principle inward. Tino rangatiratanga over your inner life means that you — not an algorithm, or advertiser, or the comparison and cultural messaging — get to decide what you genuinely want and what you genuinely need. You get to be the authority over your own longing.
This is not a small thing. In a world that has invested so much in occupying your desire, reclaiming it is an act of resistance and restoration.
A Final Word
The whakapapa of desire is not about becoming someone who wants nothing. It is not about self-denial or pretending that longing is somehow beneath you. It is about becoming someone who knows the difference between the deep current and the surface wave — between the hunger that nourishes you for a long time, and the hunger that returns before you have even finished eating.
When you know the whakapapa of your desire, you are not just making better consumer choices. You are coming home to yourself and tracing a lineage back to what is genuinely yours — to the wanting that was there before the world told you what to want.
That is worth tracing. That is worth knowing.
This post is part of the Te Poutama o te Ora Wellness Wisdom series. Te
There is a moment that many of us know well. You are standing in a shop — or scrolling through a website at midnight — and something catches your eye, and almost immediately, a thought forms: I need this.
But do you? Really?
The difference between wanting something and needing something might sound like a straightforward question. But in my work as a wellness practitioner and in developing Te Poutama o te Ora (TPO), I have come to see it as one of the most important distinctions in a person’s whole wellbeing journey. Not because wants are bad — they absolutely are not — but because when we confuse the two, we end up chasing things that can never truly satisfy us, and sometimes neglecting the things that genuinely would.
Let us sit with this together for a moment.
Needs and Wants: The Simple Version (That Is Not That Simple)
On paper, it sounds easy. Needs are the things we genuinely require for survival, safety, and basic wellbeing. Without them, we experience real harm. Food, water, shelter, and sleep are needs.
Wants are the things that enrich and enhance life — they bring us pleasure, joy, beauty, and comfort — but their absence does not threaten our fundamental wellbeing. The sushi from that particular restaurant, the designer shoes, and the upgrade to business class are a want.
Simple enough, right? Except life, as you know, is rarely that clean.
Is belonging a need or a want? Within Te Ao Māori — the Māori worldview — this is not even a question. Connection to whānau, hapū, community and to each other is as foundational to our wellbeing as food and water. Severing those connections does not just cause sadness; it causes genuine harm. The same is true of our relationship to whakapapa, whenua, our Tīpuna, and our spiritual life. Western frameworks sometimes label these as ‘cultural preferences.’ Kāo — no. These are needs.
What we call a need and what we call a want reveal what we value. And those values are always shaped by culture, context, and history.
And here is another layer: what counts as a need shifts over time and across cultures. Two hundred years ago, running water was a luxury. Now, in Aotearoa, it is a basic right. Internet access was once optional. Now, try finding work, healthcare, or education without it. Needs are not fixed categories. They are living, relational, contextual things.
Three Questions to Help You Tell the Difference
Within the TPO framework, we use three simple tests when someone is unsure whether something is a genuine need or a want seeking attention.
The Consequence Test: Ask yourself — what actually happens if I don’t have this? If the answer is disappointment or missing out, it’s likely a want. If the answer is real harm, decline, or suffering, it’s likely a need. Be honest with yourself here. The feeling of urgency around a want can be very convincing — especially when marketing has been designed specifically to create that urgency.
The Upgrade Test: Would any version satisfy this, or only a specific version? If you are hungry, any nourishing food will do — that is a need. If you will only accept the specific meal from the specific restaurant, the need is nourishment, but the want is the experience. Both are valid to know about yourself.
The Timing Test: Is this pressing, or can it wait? Genuine needs tend to be time-sensitive — you cannot postpone sleep indefinitely, and health needs cannot always wait. Wants are generally more flexible. There is wisdom in this, connecting to the Maramataka, our ancestral lunar calendar: the teaching that there is a right time for everything, and knowing when to act and when to wait is itself a form of wellbeing.
The Hidden Needs Beneath Our Surface Wants
Here is where this reflection moves from interesting to genuinely life-changing.
Sometimes, the things we want most persistently and most intensely are not really about the thing at all. They are about something deeper — a genuine need that has not yet found a direct pathway to satisfaction.
You want the new car. But dig beneath that — what need is it trying to meet? Reliable transport? Yes, perhaps. But also: status? Belonging? The felt sense of having made it, of being enough? If the need underneath is really belonging and recognition, buying the car may give you temporary relief — but the longing will return, and next time it will ask for something bigger.
You want to stay constantly busy, filling every hour, saying yes to everyone. What need is that serving? Purpose, perhaps. The comfort of feeling is needed. Or maybe — and this takes courage to look at — the avoidance of what might arise in the quiet: grief, uncertainty, a question about who you are without the doing.
You want the perfect body, the transformed appearance. And underneath? Perhaps it is health. Or the longing for safety in your own skin. Or the hope that if you look different, you will finally feel the acceptance that has always been just out of reach.
The wisdom is not in denying our wants. It is in tracing their whakapapa — asking where they came from, and what they are really reaching for.
In the TPO framework, we call this tracing the whakapapa of desire. Whakapapa is about lineage — the genealogy of something, its origins, what it comes from. When we apply this to our wants, we are asking: where did this longing come from? Is it rooted in something authentic in me, or has it been shaped by external forces — by advertising, by comparison, by a story I was handed about what I need to have in order to be enough?
Many of the wants that drive us most powerfully are, in this sense, colonised desires: longings that have been shaped by a consumer culture that profits from our sense of insufficiency. One of the most radical acts of wellbeing is to reclaim your own knowing — to trust your own sense of what you genuinely need, rather than accepting the list that the market has prepared for you.
Both Matter — But Differently
I want to be clear about something: this is not a call to live a spartan existence or to feel guilty about your wants. Wants are beautiful. They bring colour, richness, and delight to life. The latte you did not need was still lovely. The holiday that was a want, not a need, still restored something in you. These things matter.
The invitation is not to eliminate wants. It is to stop treating wants with the same urgency as needs. It is to stop living in a constant state of manufactured crisis around things that are, when we are honest, optional.
When your genuine needs are met — when you are nourished, rested, connected, safe, seen, and spiritually grounded — something shifts. The wanting quietens. Not because you have achieved some perfect detachment, but because you are no longer trying to fill genuine needs through indirect wants. From that place of met needs, wants become what they were always meant to be: joyful additions, not desperate substitutes.
A Practice to Take with You
This week, when you catch yourself saying ‘I need…’ — pause. Just for a moment.
Ask: Do I actually need this? Or do I want it? And if I want it, what need might be underneath that want?
There is no judgment in any answer. The point is to get curious about yourself. To know yourself a little more clearly. Because that clarity — knowing what you actually need, and ensuring those needs are met — is one of the most generous things you can do for yourself and for everyone around you.
When you know what you need, you stop chasing every shiny thing that marketing throws your way. You stop outsourcing your sense of sufficiency to the next purchase. You stop confusing the symptom with the cure.
You start living with intention. With discernment. With what the tīpuna might have called mōhiotanga — a deep, knowing wisdom about yourself and your place in the world.
And that, in the end, is what Te Poutama o te Ora is inviting us all toward.
Mauri ora,
About Te Poutama o te Ora
Te Poutama o te Ora is a comprehensive, Māori-grounded wellness framework that integrates nine dimensions of human well-being. It draws on indigenous epistemology, four generations of healing practice, and contemporary wellness research to offer a culturally responsive pathway to genuine flourishing — for individuals, whānau, and communities. To learn more, visit our website or explore the TPO Nine-Cycle Life Realignment Series. Subscription.Wants and Needs.
A three-phase Te Poutama o te Ora reset for when life piles up, and momentum goes missing.
Consider this scenario
Do you know that feeling — when life has quietly piled so much onto your shoulders that you can no longer remember what your plans were, what you were working toward, or even where to begin?
The to-do list has grown into a to-do novel. The inbox feels like a living thing with demands of its own. The body is tired in that deep, specific way that sleep alone does not fix…and, somewhere beneath all of it, the vision you had for yourself — the one that still matters — has gotten buried under the weight of what is urgent.
You are stuck….and I want you to know that this is completely normal. It is not a sign of failure or that the goals and activities you have set have failed. It is a sign that you are human and that life has accumulated faster than you have been able to process it.
This is precisely why Me Heke ki Mua exists.
What is Me Heke ki Mua?
Me Heke ki Mua is a te Reo Māori phrase that means, at its heart: flow forward. To heke is to descend to flow — the way water finds its path downhill freely flowing as it does in nature (Te Taiao). Me Heke ki Mua, in this context, is translated as “When You are Stuck”… and reminds us that forward movement is our nature, too… and sometimes we need the path cleared again.
In Te Poutama o te Ora, Me Heke ki Mua is the reset protocol — the answer to the question ‘what do I do when everything goes sideways?’ It is a three-phase process designed to bring you back to clarity, energy, and purpose — in that order — when disruption has knocked you off course.
Here is the thing I want you to hold from the start: this protocol does not exist because something went wrong. It exists because something natural happened. Disruption is part of life.
That is the difference with this wellness framework…when ‘life’ gets in the way…we ‘pause’…we ‘assess’…we ‘plan and act’…until ‘Noa’ returns…the place of ‘flow and alignment’.
Me Heke ki Mua is a pathway back to flow — gentle, deliberate, and grounded in who you are.
Phase One
Clear Backlog – Release what is weighing you down
When you are stuck, the first thing to do is lighten the load.
Think of it this way: imagine trying to walk forward while carrying a bag that has been gradually filled with rocks over weeks and months. Some of those rocks are urgent tasks. Some are things you meant to do and never did. Some are half-finished projects hovering at the edge of your mind. Some are digital — the unread emails, the cluttered desktop, the messages you have been meaning to respond to.
Before you can move well, you need to put the bag down. Look at what is in it. Sort it. Put back only what genuinely needs to travel with you.
In practice, this means five things:
Tidy your spaces. Your desk, bag, workspace, and digital folders. This is not housekeeping — in te Ao Māori, clarity in the environment genuinely moves energy. When the physical space is ordered, the mind can breathe.
Write everything down. Get every open item, every worry, every ‘I must not forget’ out of your head and onto paper or screen. Then sort by priority: what is (1) high impact and time-sensitive? (2) What can be delegated? (3) What can be released entirely?
Delegate and release. Do this first – Ask for help. Outsource what can be outsourced. Delete what has lost its relevance. Decide ‘not now’ – what genuinely can wait. Not everything on that list belongs to you. Immediately – this will provide relief for your mind.
Give each (1) priority a time slot. Use focused work cycles — 25 minutes on, 5 minutes rest, or 50 minutes on, 10 minutes rest. Not to finish everything. Just to move each thing forward. One step at a time.
Keep your values visible. Pin up Te Whāriki o te Ora — your values framework — somewhere you can see it. When everything feels urgent, your values remind you what matters.
The outcome of Phase 1 is this: your burden lightens. Overwhelm begins to ease. A little breathing room returns.
Phase Two
Heal Body – Restore your nervous system so your mind can follow
Here is something worth understanding about being stuck: what we think in the mind becomes manifest in the body…our thinking problems (Hinengaro)…become a body (Tinana) problem.
When you have been running on stress for a long time, your nervous system shifts into a kind of protective withdrawal. The brain’s capacity for creative thinking, long-term planning, and emotional regulation genuinely decreases. It is not a character flaw. It is biology…and you cannot think your way out of a biological state — you must move through it.
Phase 2 is about rebuilding from the inside out. Return to the basics that restore your body’s capacity to support you.
Re-establish self-care rituals. Water. Nourishing food. Sleep that restores you. These are not rewards for getting everything done. They are the foundation everything else stands on and the gift of Realignment.
Move for 30 minutes daily. Walk. Stretch. Dance in your kitchen. Whatever opens the body and shifts the energy that has gotten stuck. Movement is not optional when you are trying to restore clarity — it is one of the most direct pathways to it.
Use work cycles. This structures your energy rather than burning through it. The 25/5 or 50/10 rhythm mirrors your body’s natural ultradian cycles — roughly 90-minute rhythms of peak and rest that operate in us whether we acknowledge them or not. Work with them, not against them.
Digital detox. Turn off notifications. Step back from social media. Reduce the low-level noise that is constantly pulling at your attention. Your nervous system needs genuine quiet to reset — not just a different screen.
The body is not a vehicle you drive. It is a dimension of who you are. When the body is depleted, the spirit cannot soar — and no amount of planning will fix that.
In te Ao Māori, this phase is about the restoration of mauri — the essential life force that holds us in vitality and wholeness. When we are overwhelmed and exhausted, our mauri has been depleted. Phase 2 is the deliberate, tender work of replenishing it.
The outcome: your energy lifts. Your thinking is clear. The fog that made everything feel impossible begins to shift. You move from survival back toward stability.
Phase Three
Revisit Plans – Realign with your direction — without shame
Now — and only now, with a lighter load and a more restored body — it is time to look at where you are going again.
Phase 3 is not about starting over. It is about re-anchoring. Looking at your plans with fresh eyes and asking: what still belongs here? What needs to be adjusted? Where am I headed, and does that still feel true?
Review your timeframes — without shame. Some deadlines will have passed. Some plans will need adjusting. That is not failure — that is honest accounting. Adjust them. Flow requires flexibility, not perfection.
Choose one small and one big action each day. A micro-win to build momentum, and a meaningful win to keep you connected to the bigger picture. This is enough. Do not try to make up for lost time all at once.
Review monthly. At the end of each month, sit with what worked, what did not, and where you are headed. Not to judge the month, but to learn from it and carry forward what matters.
Reconnect with your Takutaku. Read it. Speak it aloud. Rewrite it if it needs refreshing. Your Takutaku — your personal declaration of identity, values, and vision — is your anchor. It holds the thread of who you are and where you are going when everything else has felt uncertain.
Re-anchoring in your whakapapa of purpose — knowing not just what you are doing but why, and whose legacy you carry and whose future you are building toward — is the act that transforms mere planning back into living with intention.
The outcome: your plans feel real and achievable again. Your energy and your direction are moving together. You are, genuinely, back on track.
When Flow Returns
You will feel it when it comes.
The mind clears. The body feels lighter. Tasks that seemed impossible last week feel manageable today. You start thinking ahead rather than just responding to what is immediately in front of you. The vision becomes vivid again. Your wairua lifts.
That is flow returning. That is Me Heke ki Mua doing its work.
And here is the thing about the Maramataka — our ancestral lunar calendar that teaches us the rhythms of planting, gathering, resting, and releasing, there is a right time for everything. There are seasons for abundant action and seasons for deliberate rest. The wisdom is not in pushing through every season as though it were harvesting time. The wisdom is in reading where you are and responding to that honestly.
Me Heke ki Mua will come around again. Not because you are doing something wrong. But because you are living a real life — one with seasons, with interruptions, with demands that sometimes outpace your capacity to meet them gracefully. When that happens, you now know what to do.
Clear the backlog. Heal the body. Revisit the plans. Flow forward. Me Heke ki Mua.
The protocol is not a sign of failure. It is a sign of a framework that is honest about what it means to be human — and loving enough to offer a way through.
Mauri ora,
About Te Poutama o te Ora
Te Poutama o te Ora is a comprehensive Māori-grounded wellness framework integrating nine dimensions of human wellbeing. Me Heke ki Mua is the reset protocol embedded within the framework — the answer to disruption, overwhelm, and getting off track. See here Takutaku and the full reset kit. To explore the full TPO framework and the Nine-Cycle Life Realignment Series, visit our website or subscribe to the TPO for life series and get access to all books.
You pick up your phone ‘just to check’ and three hours vanish into scroll after endless scroll. You meant to pay attention during dinner, but your mind was everywhere except at the table. You promised yourself you’d move your body today—but here you are, exhausted before you even started.
These aren’t personal failings. They’re patterns of colonisation. Systems designed to extract your attention, time, energy, money, and life force—and make you blame yourself for that disconnection.
The first three steps of Te Poutama o te Ora are about waking up to what’s really happening, establishing your right to choose differently, and building the strength to resist when those systems fight back.
Let’s walk this foundational journey together.
Step 1: Te Ohorere – The Awakening
Seeing What You Haven’t Been Seeing
You cannot change what you don’t see. The most effective colonisation happens below conscious awareness—automatic patterns so normalised that they feel like personal choices.
Step 1 is simple but not easy: For seven days, you become an observer of your own life. Not to judge yourself or fix anything. Just to see.
You track your behaviours across five dimensions:
Whakapapa (Connection): How do you actually connect with people? Are you present or distracted?
Tinana (Body): How does your body feel? What’s your relationship with movement, food, rest?
Tuakiri (Identity): Where do you feel most yourself? Where are you performing?
Wairua (Spirit): When do you have stillness? When do you reach for distraction?
Hinengaro (Mind): What’s the quality of your thoughts? Calm or scattered? Focused or fragmented?
Every day, you answer these same questions. No editing or justifying; just the truth.
After seven days, patterns emerge:
You reach for your phone every time you feel uncomfortable.
You’re most distracted when you’re supposed to be most present.
Your body has been trying to tell you something for months, and you’ve been ignoring it.
You can’t remember the last time you sat in stillness without needing to do something.
This awareness isn’t comfortable. You might discover things that shame or alarm you. But here’s the truth: There is no judgment, just information. The beginning of making different choices.
Te Whāriki o te Ora – Goal Setting
After tracking your behaviours, you rank each dimension:
Which is suffering most?
Which patterns need immediate attention?
You don’t try to fix everything at once—that’s how change fails. You choose three specific goals, the ones that matter most right now:
“I want to be fully present when I’m with my family.”
“I want to move my body at least 20 minutes every day.”
“I want to stay focused when completing important tasks.”
These aren’t wishes, they are invitations to reclaim what colonisation has taken: your attention and body, your presence and life.
Step 2: Te Whakatūria tō Mana – Establishing Your Authority – Knowing to Doing
Awareness is powerful. But awareness alone doesn’t change anything. Step 2 is where you transform what you know into what you do.
Te Whakatūria tō Mana means establishing your mana—your authority, your power to choose. In te ao Māori, mana exists inherently. You already have it. But mana strengthens through action, showing up, choosing yourself consistently even when it’s difficult.
This is where your goals get specific. Not vague hopes but actual commitments:
Before: “I want to be more present with family.”
Now: “One meal every day with my family, phones in another room, focused on each other.”
Before: “I should exercise more.”
Now: “Walk for 20 minutes every morning after breakfast.”
See the difference? The first is a wish, the second is a practice.
Making It Easier to Choose Yourself
You don’t rely on willpower alone—willpower is limited, and you need it for harder things.
Instead, you design your environment to make sovereignty the path of least resistance:
Put your walking shoes by the door.
Create a phone drop zone away from the dining table.
Prepare your walking clothes the night before.
Set specific times when you check messages instead of constantly.
You also attach new practices to existing routines—’habit stacking.’ After dinner, we walk. After work, phones go in the drawer. When you wake up, journal for five minutes. The routine becomes the trigger; the decision is already made.
The Three-Tier System: Sustainable, Not Perfect
You organize your practices into three levels:
Tier 1: Daily Non-Negotiables – Do every single day, no matter what. (Example: One meal with family, fully present).
Tier 2: Regular Practices – 3-4 times per week. (Example: Walk 20 minutes on Monday, Thursday, Saturday).
Tier 3: Aspirational Rhythms – When possible, without guilt if missed. (Example: Evening reflection before bed).
This structure prevents the all-or-nothing trap. You’re not trying to be perfect. You’re building the muscle of showing up. Every time you follow through, your mana strengthens. When you begin to notice you have drifted and you return to practising without shame, your mana strengthens.
Tracking Your Practice, Not Your Perfection
You keep it simple. A checkmark for each day you showed up. Not how perfectly you walked or how enlightened the dinner conversation was—just: Did I do the thing?
This builds identity: ‘I am someone who walks.’ ‘I am someone who shows up for my family.’ ‘I am someone who protects my focus.’
When you miss a day—and you will—that’s not failure. That’s information. What got in the way? What needs adjusting? You note it, adjust, and continue. No shame stories, just learning.
Step 3: Te Whakawhanake i tō Kaha – Developing Your Strength
When Systems Push Back
Here’s what you might have noticed: When you started protecting your attention in Step 2, the world didn’t just accept it. Things got harder.
Notifications became more urgent.
Social pressure increased. (‘Why aren’t you responding?’ ‘Just this once…’).
Schedules shifted making your family dinner time suddenly impossible.
The walking routine that felt easy last week now feels like climbing a mountain.
This isn’t your imagination. When you begin extracting yourself from dependency systems, they escalate. They test your boundaries to find new ways to hook you back in.
Step 3 is where you build kaha—not just the right to choose (that’s mana), but the capacity to sustain those choices when everything is designed to break your resolve.
The Nine-Day Resistance Challenge
For nine days, you intentionally strengthen your boundaries. Each day targets a specific capacity:
Day 1: Block time in your calendar. Make your practices non-negotiable appointments with yourself.
Day 2: Create physical boundaries. Devices go away during practice times—not face-down, actually away.
Day 3: Strengthen your anchor. Walk immediately after eating. Dinner happens at 6pm. The routine makes the choice.
Day 4: Shrink the requirement. Ten minutes counts. Sitting at the table counts. Something is always better than nothing.
Day 5: Name your purpose out loud. ‘I walk for my health.’ ‘We eat together to connect.’
Day 6: Get social commitment. Tell your family, ‘This is our mealtime.’ Ask for support.
Day 7: Expect resistance and plan for it. Weather will be bad. You’ll feel tired. Someone will want their phone. Have your response ready: ‘We’ll walk shorter.’ ‘Phones after dinner.’ ‘Ten minutes only.’
Day 8: Track consistency, not performance. Did we eat together? Did I walk? That’s all that matters.
Day 9: Protect the habit. Use clear, neutral language: ‘We eat without devices.’ ‘I walk every day.’ Not negotiable, just fact.
This isn’t about willpower. It’s about structure, repetition, lowered friction, and clear boundaries. You’re training follow-through, not motivation.
Building Boundaries That Hold
Beyond daily practices, you need ‘architectural boundaries’—systems that make resistance automatic:
Device segregation: Work device separate from a personal device. Phone versus computer. Each has specific, limited purposes.
Space segregation: Phone-free zones in your home. Sanctuary spaces where dependency cannot reach.
Time segregation: Communication windows when you check messages. Creation windows when phone is off. Rest windows with complete disconnection.
These structural boundaries protect you when you’re depleted, when willpower is gone, when resistance feels impossible. The decision is already made. The boundary holds automatically.
Standing in Your Authority
The hardest resistance often comes from people you care about. You practice authority statements—declarations without apology or explanation:
Instead of: “I’m trying to spend less time on my phone, so…”
Say: “I’m offline after 7pm.”
Instead of: “Sorry, I can’t afford that right now because…”
Say: “That doesn’t work for my budget.”
Instead of: “I’m working on being more mindful when I eat, so…”
Say: “I don’t eat with screens.”
Notice the shift? The first version seeks permission. The second claims sovereignty. You’re not asking if it’s okay to protect yourself. You’re stating what is.
Building Collective Resistance
Individual resistance is powerful. But collective resistance is transformative.
You find 2-4 others who are also reclaiming their lives. You meet weekly—even just 30 minutes—to share what you’re facing, strategize together, celebrate victories, and remind each other why this matters.
When you resist alone, systems isolate you. When you resist together, you normalize boundaries that the world calls extreme. You share strategies that work. You sustain each other when personal capacity wavers.
Your healing is resistance. Your sovereignty is rebellion and when you rebel together? That’s when real change becomes possible.
What You Carry Forward
At the end of these three foundational steps, you have:
Awareness of patterns you couldn’t see before.
Established practices integrated into daily life.
Created boundaries that hold even when systems escalate.
Found evidence of your mana—moments when you chose intention over impulse.
Built Kaha—proven capacity to resist what seeks to fragment you.
This is the foundation, not the destination, but the ground from which everything else grows.
Steps 4-9 will deepen this work—moving from resistance into sovereignty; practice into mastery; effort into ease. But none of that is possible without this foundation. Without awareness, authority and strength.
The systems that colonise your attention, time, body, and your resources—they are real. They’re designed by brilliant people who understand how human brains work and backed by billions of dollars and sophisticated algorithms.
But here’s what they can’t engineer: your decision to see clearly. Your commitment to show up for yourself. The capacity to resist when it matters. The refusal to blame yourself for systemic problems and the willingness to build something different.
The challenges you face aren’t personal failings. They’re colonisation. Your wellness work; that’s resistance, reclamation and the beginning of liberation.
Every boundary that holds under pressure strengthens your kaha. When you resist distraction, you build resistance muscle. When you return to practice after slipping, you prove your capacity.
You’re not broken. You’re waking up and that awakening is the first step toward everything.
Kia kaha. Kia māia. Kia manawanui.
Be strong. Be brave. Remain steadfast.
The foundation is real. Your mana is real. Your kaha is growing. The spiral continues.
