Lomilomi- Ohana

Previously, I wrote about my experience first visiting the island of Kaua'i, and receiving Lomilomi from Auntie Angeline's Muʻolaulani.  This opened for me the wisdom teachings of Hawai'i, of the loving practice of Lomilomi.  

I wanted to go back to Kaua'i the next year, and I wanted to learn lomilomi.  I graduated from Healing Spirits Massage School that year, and felt that Lomilomi was a meaningful path to continue to study and practice massage therapy.  This instinct was dead on.  I began researching programs.

I found a lomilomi training held on the island of Kaua'i.  It was a ten day, 40 hour, residential 'retreat' held in the mountainous area north of Anahola.  Gloria Coppola led this journey.  She studied with students of Kahu Abraham, from the 'Temple' style of Lomilomi.  Ten days in Kaua'i, staying in a gorgeous location, living, studying, practicing; this sounded amazing to me.

I had no idea what an excellent choice I had made.  The benefits of this retreat were profound, lasting, life altering.  I have done many spiritual retreats in the Tibetan Buddhist community, which are considered 'deep' retreats- meditating in a group for a month, a three month long 'seminary', tantric retreats for initiated students in the tradition.  Many retreats, I have done.  The Lomllomi retreat blew my mind and heart further open.

The basis of this lomilomi retreat was living closely together, learning Ho'oponopono- the art of saying what needs to be said.  Another way of understanding Ho'oponopono is forgiveness.  We cannot forgive what we haven't yet acknowledged.  These skills of Ho'oponopono are part of creating Ohana; family, acknowledging interdependence.  As Ohana, a Lomilomi family, we practiced communication/interpersonal skills, part of the Hawaiian lomi tradition.  It formed a basis for us to live closely, and to study deeply.  Living closely is often a struggle; as it is uncommon to share so closely in our American lifestyle.  Even in the spiritual communities, we often forgo the more difficult interpersonal work, and at an enormous cost.

As we know from Disney's Lilo & Stitch movie; Ohana means no one gets left behind.  It is a simple, profound statement.  Each of us are an important part of a group.  When we exclude, we de-moralize, discredit, and disrespect, and society suffers.  Inclusivity is a profound contradiction to how many of us grew up.  Our American society prides itself in the individual; competition is often taught to be inherent to capitalism and therefor success.  

I believe we are seeing the fallout of this exclusivity now; in the school shootings and other forms of violence which have resulted from the profound isolation many feel in their lives.  Ohana is the principle that we are stronger, greater as a society when we honor and allow for differences, for everybody to feel part of.

The Ohana principle is a deep journey to take, and not always easy.  Many of us have never experienced this belonging.  Our own families may have been places where we felt profoundly left out, discredited, unseen, and at times forced to adapt in ways that left us feeling misunderstood and/or neglected.  We may have been encouraged to be 'strong'; to excel in everything, to be the best, and yet underneath that we felt emotionally abandoned and bereft.    

Ohana implies that we create a society which can value individuals, AND groups.  Neither is the sum total and both imply each other.  Ohana is a value that America, in particular, I believe, can stand to benefit enormously from.  When we take our fierce individualism which we are so proud of, and combine it with acknowledging the very human need to belong without sacrificing our uniqueness, we can create a much stronger society.  

http://www.gloriacoppola.com/#!retreats/c9p0

Finding Lomi Lomi

I 'came across' Hawaiian Lomilomi during a trip to the island of Kaua'i.  I went there with family to spread my father's ashes a year after his death.  I had never been to this amazing island, despite having lived on the Big Island of Hawai'i as a young child and in High School.  My father had been born on Oahu, at the close of WW2, as his father finished his enlistment to the Navy.  My father always felt a special relationship with these islands. He had served there during his own enlistment as a Marine during the Vietnam War, and spent several months in the valley of Kalalau, a very special area to native Hawaiians.  My young parents lived on Kaua'i, and were married in a small church in Princeville.

What I didn't expect when I went to Kaua'i that first time, to spread my fathers ashes, was how deeply I would be touched by the gentleness and love of this island.  The Hawaiian islands are, famously, beautiful.  And yet, many who live or have lived there know, they also have an side which can be quite painful.  The Big Island of Hawai'i has an active volcano, which creates an energetic which can be deeply unsettling.  In my experience, each island has a unique energy.  I was touched by the gentleness, and healing that I felt from the island of Kaua'i.

One of my family's first stops on that visit, was to Auntie Angelines' Lomilomi Hale.  We made the trip from the southern area of Poipu, up to Anahola, a community of mostly native Hawaiian people.  There we found this wonderful sanctuary of Lomilomi- Auntie Angelines.  As we arrived, we were encouraged to shower, change into a sarong, and to take a steam bath.

As we were a party of six, we were encouraged to relax in the lounge chairs on the porch, which had an amazing view of the nearby mountain peaks, which were sacred reliquaries of Hawaiian bones up on the cliffs.  There was a truly timeless quality to being there, and Lomilomi has that hallmark of feeling timeless.  

When it was my turn to experience Lomilomi, I had the extraordinary pleasure of receiving a 'four hands' massage'; which means that two people worked on me simultaneously.  One woman on each side of me, they worked in tandem mostly replicating what the other was doing.  This had the effect of completely decimating my ability to track what was being done, and thus my conceptual mind.  As a massage therapist myself, it can be tricky sometimes to 'turn off' that part of the brain that is curious about what techniques are being employed, etc.  In this case, it was impossible, I was sent to such a blissful and non-conceptual realm.  The rhythmic synchronization, impeccable timing, connection between the practitioners, and deep love that I felt there was transcendent and healing.  

I had never felt massage that penetrated to such a deep level as Lomilomi.  Perhaps it was a combination of the rawness of my father's recent passing, the tenderness with which I met this amazing island of Kaua'i, the spiritual power that I experienced as the land there, and the love emanating from it, along with the skill of these practitioners.  I knew the practitioners were family of Auntie Angelique, a Hawaiian woman who began to practice her roots as a healer later in her life; after she had raised her family.  And I had some understanding of this indiginous culture, enough to know that Hawaiians are a deeply loving, gentle (and fierce) people.

This massage set a tone of deep relaxation, connection, bonding, and togetherness for my family's stay on Kaua'i.  It helped us to 'get on island time'.  'Island time' means more than just late or loose.  In Tibetan Buddhism, there is a term 'shinjang'.  Shinjang is translated as 'thoroughly processes' or 'pliant'.  It often is referring to someone who has done a lot of practice.  The result is that you have a profound level of synchronization of mind, body, heart.  We are embodied.  We are in tune with ourselves.  We know what we feel, and that feeling leads the way, not our conceptual mind, which often has us turning in circles.  

From Sogyal Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist teacher:

"The Tibetan word for ‘pliancy’ or ‘flexibility’, shin jang, means that you have some sense of how to ride your own mind. At first, you learn how to tame your mind. Having tamed your mind, you learn how to make friends with it. And having made friends with it, you learn how to make use of it. This is riding your mind. Shin jang is a very important term. It is often referred to as the fruition, or the complete accomplishment of shamatha. At that level you begin to develop what you could call ‘big shin jang’: your mind is soothed, your body is completely relaxed. But here, shin jang as an antidote is what you could call ‘early’ shin jang, not ‘final’ shin jang. Here, you are simply learning to make friends with yourself. You have some sense of relaxation and some sense of trust in yourself. You have become less paranoid about your own mind. You realize that your mind is workable and that there is an end to suffering from your mind, of your mind, with your mind, and by your mind."

As you can see, to feel 'shinjang' is a profound state.  And as you can imagine, my experience with this pearl of wisdom from the indigenous people of Hawai'i, Lomilomi, piqued my interest in Hawaiian healing arts.  So I became interested in continuing my massage therapy training, begun at Healing Spirits Integrative Massage Therapy School in Boulder.  Read on in Part 2.....

If you go to Kaua'i, don't miss the opportunity to have this experience.  You can schedule with them ahead:

http://www.angelineslomikauai.com/