What is this thing called Aloha?

My relationship to, and understanding of aloha, is continually growing and changing and deepening. However, here are some reflections from where I currently am on the mountain!

Aloha – as felt by me: when I speak it out loud, I feel my nervous system respond as though it were fabric standing upright being combed down smooth. I feel it internally as naturally as my heartbeat. When I hear others say it, I feel I am at home with tribe. I belong. When I whisper it, I feel I am whispering some ancient magic that is too sacred to say out loud as though to do so would be disrespectful and dismissive of its power. When I think it, it’s like a lullaby for my ego, which settles into a fluffy pillow of ease where it sinks and floats at the same time. It makes the tyranny of the ticking clock fade into the distance and suspends me in vertical time where my body is a temple standing in reverence between the great parents of earth and sky. When I feel it fully, all I want to do is serve whoever and whatever is in front of me in this now moment which is all that matters.

Aloha – as defined by Nani Ke Aloha (otherwise known as Charlie Snow) in their beautiful book of wisdom that they give to people learning lomilomi: ‘living unconditional love with joy, ease and presence’.

Aloha – as a greeting or a goodbye: at its most surface level, and to a large amount of westerners, this is a way to great people, to say ‘hello’. But, like all Hawaiian words and wisdoms, there are many layers and levels of understanding as to what aloha actually is. Even if we just stick with thinking of it as a greeting, it is not simply a translation of ‘hello’. It’s a way of recognising the good or highest in others from the good or highest in yourself while also recognising the whole person from the whole person of yourself. Perhaps it could mean ‘all of me sees and loves and recognises all of you, and to do that I see and love and recognise all of me.’ Perhaps there could be another sentence after this that goes something like: ‘And I know that beneath our skin, you and I are the same, we come from the same place and will return to the same place and we are all connected through breath and aloha, to nā akua (spirit and all of creation)’.

Aloha – as unconditional love, joy and bliss: Aloha is an invitation to remember that we are loved unconditionally and that we therefore know in our bones and our waters how to love unconditionally. It reminds us that giving and receiving unconditional love is as natural to us as breathing in and out. Many of us these days have forgotten both how to breathe well, and how to give and receive unconditional love. Maybe the two go together. If we learn how to do this, we are able to dip into bliss and joy, and these spaces are every human’s birthright.

Aloha – and how it connects with lomilomi: Lomilomi as aloha in action. Giving and receiving lomilomi is giving and receiving unconditional love. When we give a lomilomi session, we drop into the pa’a (the now) and flow with aloha. We become a channel – our arms are an extension of our heart, and we flow with the grace of nā Akua to help whoever is receiving in the highest possible way for the benefit of all. Healing is for the benefit of all because we are all connected. When one person heals, we all heal.

Aloha – as a life path – a way to ‘live a good story’: When we slip out of western mindset/logical brain/ego and we walk the way of flow and aloha we do what is pono (right) and we walk our truth. When we do this we (to borrow someone else’s words, Rumi maybe or Osho? I could take a diversion here and look it up – but I actually don’t think it matters since no one ‘owns words’, they are just expressions of Spirit which is available to all of us!) Anyhow – to borrow words that have already been downloaded by someone else, when we live and walk the path of aloha we ‘move the way love makes us move, not the way fear makes us move’. As lomilomi practitioners, we need to be living this way, as we can only give lomilomi if we are able to channel aloha, and we can only channel aloha if we are not blocked by fear.

Of course we are human, and we are going to have blocks and challenges within ourselves, but as long as we are doing the work and walking the path, aloha will find it

s way through. If we do follow aloha, it’s impossible to stay stuck in a job that has no meaning or purpose other than to pay the bills. I know this to be true from my own experience. I was close to breaking point and burn out before realising I needed to start walking away from my public service job and do what I was here to do.

Through Indigenous Australian wisdom that has been shared with me, I have learned that it’s important to live a good story. That everyone is born with a role to play in the world and it’s important to know what that role is (or what your gift is to share) and to play it and share it. Following aloha is my way of doing this. It has become the only way to live, for me now. And once you start treading this path, my experience is that there is no turning back. It’s a way of walking away from illusion and delusion (the material wealth and trappings) into truth and purpose and true abundance.

Aloha – as a way of connecting us to the dreaming way – sticking with Australian Indigenous wisdom (I think all Indigenous earth-based wisdoms are connected and similar and I also love to weave them together given we live here in Australia, it helps me localise the Hawaiian wisdom). So, I have recently learned that Indigenous Australian wisdom talks about how, if we each live a good story, then we are all following the dreaming path, or the way of the Dreaming, or the Dreaming way. It doesn’t matter what colour our skin is in this physical manifestation that we are in. The dreaming way is a way of living in harmony with each other and the earth. When anyone finds their true purpose and starts to live it, they become part of this bigger pathway. So following aloha helps me tread my own footsteps, live my truth and become part of the Dreaming.

Mahalo (thank you) for sitting by the fire with me. Aloha.

Written by Dahna McConnachie - Senior Lomilomi Practitioner, Holistic Psychotherapist and Dru Yoga Teacher. To find out more about Dahna and her work: inneradiance.com.au