May 1993 and I find myself in Costa Mesa, California. I’m attending Tad James’ Accelerated NLP Practitioner Certification. My motivation at the time was to become the world’s best NLP Sales Trainer. Little did I know where that week would lead to over the next 30 years.
Out of all of the life changing experiences I had that week one early morning sticks out in my mind almost 25 years later.
Huna, from Hawaii, what’s that? I thought.
Now, there is something else you need to put into this equation. I had to make this work. I had sold, begged and borrowed to do this training as I totally believed it would be the turning point for me. So I was going to attend every session no matter how early or how late.
I had never heard of Huna, and I was going, just because.
Tad started the session with an ancient Hawaiian chant. A chant we can trace back at least 750 years and if the myths and the legends of Hawaii are true 35000 years.
Ai noho ana keakua I ka na helehele…
My body lit up like a Christmas Tree and bizarrely I knew the chant and yet I didn’t. I knew at that moment I had to learn Huna.
When, through my NLP trainings, I had the money I travelled to Hawaii to learn Huna. After several years of study I was asked to teach Huna and now after 24 years and more than 30 trips to a tiny group of islands in the middle of the pacific I am very privileged to be a Kumu (teacher) in one of the oldest lineages.
To be totally clear Huna is not what these teachings were originally called. The term Huna was first used by Max Freedom Long in the last century. He openly says in his books it was a name he came up with to label the teachings.
It comes from the word Kahuna which has many meanings. One being keeper of the secret. Therefore one of the meanings of Huna is secret. Not “I’ve got a secret and not going to tell you”, more secret as in hidden from sight.
We think that a more accurate name was Ho’o Mana. Which means to make energy or simply to empower. Would you like more energy? Would you like to be empowered? The study of Huna gives you the ability to make life force energy and in my opinion is some of the most personally empowering information available in the world today.
For convenience, throughout this article I will use the term Huna as it’s the most widely used term and will enable you to do more personal research should you choose to.
Huna was the original spiritual teaching and practice in ancient Hawaii. The teachings have been preserved in the chants and the dance of the Hula. When the missionaries arrived in Hawaii on the 30th March 1820 they promptly made the practice of Huna and the dancing of the Hula illegal. Just like many places in the World the teachings went underground and were passed on from generation to generation orally. Due to the geographical remoteness of Hawaii this happened comparatively recently meaning that the teachings have stayed more intact compared to those in Europe for instance outlawed in the Holy Inquisition. The last law against Huna wasn’t repealed until 1985!
All systems of Magic, of which there are many, all over the world, use symbols. Very few people know how symbols really work and an interesting aspect of this is reverse symbology. Your unconscious mind works symbolically. We all know this with our dreams. Our unconscious mind takes everything symbolically. Whereas our conscious mind attempts to make sense out of everything, and quite often fails!
In the world of symbols there is cause and effect. There is always a cause for everything. Yes, everything and it’s you. And when you fully accept that then you can play the game of symbolic magic.
Here’s a really cool trick. You stub your toe and it hurts! What caused the hurt? The impact of your toe with the furniture. So reverse it. Put your toe against the furniture and quickly pull it back. As you repeat this a number of times bizarrely the pain disappears.
Every ancient teaching has a creation story and Huna is no different. It’s called the Kumulipo.
Keawe is the spirit element. Formless, timeless and not moving. Pure nothing ness. Then movement began in the form of Mana (energy). A wave arose and time began. Keawe is the source of all being. In the begining all came from here and all will return here in the end. But there is no movement in the stillness of space until the power stirs. The power of the active principle of creation Kane (the male aspect of the creator) is called by the passive principle Uli (the female aspect of the creator). Everything that exists is subject to the nature of the active or passive principle.
As the Mana hits the edge of the Universe it creates Kane and the first creation is complete. Then the first dichotomy is born as Kane creates Ku and Kanaloa. Everything is existence is created as a dichotomy. Light and dark, male and female, right and wrong, good and bad, you and me etc. If one side of the dichotomy is X then the other side is everything that X is not!
The Kumulipo has parallels in all creation stories including the Big Bang Theory. It’s not what actually happened it’s just a symbol. And as a symbol it is very powerful as we can reverse the symbol to uncreate things like presenting problems. A problem would be a dichotomy that opposes what we do.
I remember doing a demonstration of this on one of my Huna trainings. My demonstration subject was a lady who wanted to quit smoking. She had used all the NLP techniques she had learnt up to Master Practitioner to no avail. The dichotomy was her on one side and cigarettes on the other. When I associated her into the cigarette side of the dichotomy she got annoyed. They were laughing at her as they had power over her. Using the symbol I had her rise to the level of Kane, pull up the energy from both sides of the dichotomy and then disappear into the Keawe. Once in the nothing ness I had her choose a new dichotomy. As soon as she did this she returned as Kane and sent the energy down into both sides of the new dichotomy. She never smoked again.
I started to wonder if this symbol could be applied to NLP change patterns like Collapse Anchors, SWISH patterns, Neuro drivers and Visual Squash Parts Integration. In each we have a dichotomy. The negative state and the positive resource state. The problem part and the part that that part is most in conflict with. When implemented correctly the mind goes completely blank at the moment of collapse or integration. Is this because these patterns uncreate the problem dichotomy, take it back into the void, the Keawe, and then recreate the new desired dichotomy? Who knows? It’s just a suggestion.
Maybe there was more to the first book on NLP being titled The Structure Of Magic than we thought!
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