I loved that whare. I still do. But working as a crisis counsellor, I kept noticing something it didn’t seem to hold. People could have strong faith and close whānau and still not know who they were. So I asked: where does Tuakiri, identity, sit in this house? And could the whare become Te Whare Tapa Rima, a five-sided house?
I ended that article by saying the answer wouldn’t come from academic discussion. It would come from lived practice. From those who dare to climb the poutama while remaining sheltered by the whare.
Nearly a year on, I want to walk back through what practice taught me.
The number held. Almost everything else changed.
I proposed a 5 + 3 + 1 structure. Five core dimensions. Three surrounding conditions: environment, circumstances and influences. And a ninth element, Te Haerenga, the journey.
The shape survived. The contents did not.
Whānau became Whakapapa. This happened earlier than I remember. By the time I wrote the first TPO book, Life Realignment, Whakapapa was already at the base. Whānau describes who stands around us now. Whakapapa carries who came before us and who comes after. The work that followed needed that longer line.
Tuakiri didn’t become a fifth wall. It became the centre post. In practice, identity did more than stand beside the other dimensions. It decided whether change in any of them would hold. So Tuakiri became the Poutokomanawa, the post the whole whare is built around.
The three conditions became three bridges. Environment, circumstances and influences were real, but too broad to act on. What people were actually bringing to me was more specific: their phones, their money, their puku. Those became Taha Matihiko, Taha Pūtea and Taha Kai. Part Three tells that story.
The ninth place took the longest to settle. Te Haerenga went first. The journey is how we move through all nine dimensions, so it can’t be one of them. For a while, Te Taiao, the environment, held the ninth place. Then, by April this year, Taha Auaha arrived. Creativity. The place where everything we have worked through is finally released and made new.
What I notice looking back
The core and the centre settled within weeks. The bridges took months. The ninth took the longest of all.
I don’t think that’s an accident. Auaha is the dimension that brings the others together. It could only be named once the others were clear.
And the 5 + 3 + 1 shape held through it all. I’ve come to see it less as a fixed list and more as a frame strong enough to hold change. The whare gives shelter. The poutama gives the climb.
The question I’m still holding
One thing from that first article doesn’t have a home yet. Te Taiao, the environment, no longer has a place among the nine. Are its concerns now carried inside the other dimensions? Or does it need a home of its own? I don’t know yet. Practice will tell me.
The question I started with was whether ancient knowledge could form a wellness framework. I think that one has been answered. The question I’m carrying now is different: what will those who climb the poutama show us that couldn’t be seen from the first step?
Next week: The Question of Rhythm, and what happened when I stopped trying to fit the moon to my numbers.
Coming soon: The Whakapapa Lens kōrero
This article is Part One of a series that begins with The Question of Nine. Alongside the writing, I’m launching The Whakapapa Lens, a series of recorded kōrero that walk the nine steps of Te Ara Iwa one day at a time, starting with Tuakiri, our identity.
These kōrero are for anyone who has asked, “Why do I keep repeating what I never chose?” They’re not about what’s wrong with you. They ask what happened in your whakapapa.
The first set launches at the end of November. To be among the first to hear, sign up at iantemo.com/the-whakapapa-lens
Every story has a whakapapa, and every whakapapa has a story.