In Ancient Hawaiian Shamanism (Huna) there is an exercise called Ho’oponopono which has some extremely interesting (if not important) implications for Reiki. I trained in Huna with both Serge King and Tad James in Hawaii and, as is true with many Reiki teachers and Reiki trainings, the two forms of Huna were quite distinct… almost as if they were two completely unrelated systems… except for the energy, which I found to be quite similar. This is reminiscent of Traditional Japanese Reiki teachers who place more emphasis on the energy lineage rather than the training lineage (which is a bit off the beaten track and will hence be discussed at another time).

A Little About Huna

Basically, Huna is a modern name for an ancient system, it is one of the original arts and sciences of healing and spiritual development hailing from Hawaii and barely surviving (along with hula) attacks from well meaning missionaries and politicians. Huna shares many characteristics with other ancient shamanic systems, such as: guardian spirits, 5 elements, breath-work, dream-work, herbology, energy healing, numerology, astrology, etc., but for our purposes today involving Reiki Healing, the energy healing aspect is what we are primarily concerned with.

There are extensive volumes that can (and have) been written about Huna, so I can only hope to scratch the surface of one aspect today to give you a glimpse of what lies beneath and how it might be applied to Reiki. That aspect concerns Aka, which is the energy that surrounds us and connects us to people, places and things. This is not to be confused with mana, which is energy which comes from within and equates to the ki that we use in Reiki. A simplified explanation is that ki/mana is aka that is brought inside through breath-work or other exercises.

Aka Cords, are Aka connections between people, places and things. The stronger the connection, the thicker and stronger the Aka Cord and an experienced Kahuna (Huna Shaman) has the ability to see those connections just as some people in other traditions have the ability to see auras and chakras. People that you sense a strong connection with… well, you literally have a strong (aka) connection with and energy can freely flow back and forth along those aka connections. Sometimes this is good, and sometimes it is not so good.

A Little About Ho’oponopono

There are many variations of Ho’oponopono, and different branches of Huna teach it differently, just as the attunement process, Reiju and Hatsurei Ho vary from teacher to teacher in Reiki. Ho’oponopono itself can be translated as “making right” and is designed to use different exercises and techniques to restore balance to your energetic system.

A simple Ho’oponopono exercise involves deep “ha” breathing, visualization of a stage, arena, raised platform or some such screening area, calling in those people who you no longer need/want a connection with, confirming your love/respect/forgiveness/appreciation for that person and cutting the cord. This stops the two way energy flow, and in cases where that connection was taking more than it was giving, you will immediately feel a surge in energy as your balance is restored which is quite an intersting sensation.

I’ve performed Ho’oponopono where immediately afterwards the person involved contacted me out of the blue, sometimes after many years, just to see how I’m doing. To quote Mr. Spock… “Fascinating…”

Great caution should be exercised when performing Ho’oponopono as it is an extremely powerful practice… and once a cord is cut, you can’t just switch it back on. If you cut all of your connections… you really will be all alone, and you never know when you might rethink your life and choose to come out of your cave or descend from the mountain… as it were.

Ho’oponopono and Reiki

While Ho’oponopono can be considered in and applied to many aspects of Reiki, today I am going to address the use of Ho’oponopono in distance Reiki healing. First off, I believe that whenever you perform a healing on someone you create an aka connection with that person. This is true for hands-on healing as well as distance healing. Someone performing a lot of distance healings is making a lot of connections with a lot of dis-eased people. After the healing, those aka connections are still there and without cutting them, you may be expending a lot of energy unwisely.

While performing Reiki, Reiki itself connects to the other person through you and that connection never really touches you. However, there is another connection being created, and that is, according to Huna, the aka connection which you may not want to keep around after the healing as it will continue to draw energy from you. Dr. Usui died rather young and it seems many energy healers are often low on energy or predisposed to early exits… so to speak. Perhaps there is some connection.

An easy solution would be to cut the connection with people you have no need to keep it with, using the above exercise after every distance healing. This is done, not only for protection, but also to keep your energies at full force and in balance. Care must be taken, as this is an extremely powerful exercise with far reaching implications.

In Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) there is one practice of separating the emotions from the experience in any given situation, so that when you release negative emotions you don’t lose the learnings/knowledge that came along with the experience. Memories, knowledge and experiences can be stored in these ethereal aka connections, and simply cutting them can impractically remove the knowledge from your access as well… so you really do need to be careful in dealing with things like this.

I’ll pick up this discussion at a later date, but for the time being, suffice it to say that there is an extremely interesting aspect of energy work contained in the relationship between Huna and Reiki… and especially in the practice of Ho’oponopono.

For further explanation or discussion, your thoughts are most welcome and highly encouraged, please feel free to comment below!!!