Ideas and guidance
Articles for understanding, reflection and change
Practical insights from counsellors across Aotearoa, written to help you make sense of what you are experiencing.
Me and the Cave
How five years in the dark became Te Poutama Ora – and Imago Dei brought me front and centreYou may already be familiar with my life origins; thirty-five years in a corporate environment enabled me to build a lifestyle, from all intents and purposes…was successful. Then a life-changing event that turned that vision completely upside…
Te Ngākau Tūāhua – The Normalised Heart
When the wound became the water.There is a kind of harm that is very difficult to see.Not because it is hidden. But because it has been present so long, and so completely, that it stopped looking like harm at all. It became ordinary. It became the way things are, and for many of us, what…
When you finally have a name for it – Colonisation PTSD
The healing that begins the moment you stop calling the wound “just how I am”…to “I am suffering from Colonisation PTSD”There is a suffering where you are triggered by specific acts or situations…and you really don’t know why. It is the suffering of not knowing something is wrong…but not knowing what that is…and…what am I…
Te Māra me te Pīkao – The Garden and the Ivy
Three sentences. Three exiles. And why “just get over it” is not a garden — it’s a weed strategy.Poison ivy doesn’t announce itself.It sits quietly along the fence line, climbs where no one is looking, and waits for the right conditions. Then it releases. The strangulation isn’t sudden — it was always there. What changes…
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The Poison Ivy You Didn’t Plant – Understanding Colonisation — why naming it changes everything
I chose the metaphor of Poison Ivy for a specific reason:There is a plant called poison ivy. Once it gets into your system, the urushiol oil it carries can take up to three days to produce a reaction. By the time the itch arrives — the rash, the inflammation, the unbearable urge to scratch —…
Te Ara Iwa – Walking the Path of Nine in Rhythm with the Moon
We revisit the alignment of TPO and Te Maramataka – The Temporal SpineThere is a question I get asked when people first encounter Te Poutama Ora: why ninety days?It’s a fair question. Most wellness programmes are structured around weeks — six weeks, eight weeks, twelve. Clean numbers. Neat calendar blocks. The kind of timeframes that…
My Body Died Twice – Here is what I learned when it did
My body has died twice.Cancer twice. And both times, I thought my body was betraying me. Both times, I was wrong.My body was doing what my mind couldn’t comprehend. Physical breakdown forcing the spiritual breakthrough that nothing else had managed to produce. The illness wasn’t punishment. It wasn’t a failure. It was the body doing,…
Your Anxiety Was Never the Problem – What Hinengaro Autophagy is, and why it only works after the first three months
Let me tell you something nobody said to me during the years I spent trying to fix my mental and emotional patterns.They were not broken.They were responding. Accurately. Intelligently. To genuinely difficult circumstances. And the reason all the tools and techniques and positive thinking and therapy weren’t landing the way they were supposed to was…
Te Whitu Matenga Wairua — The Seven Spiritual Deaths I Didn’t See Coming
Symbolic Death, Dimensional Autophagy, and Identity TransformationLooking back over my life, I can identify seven moments that changed me permanently.Not because they hurt.Not because they were dramatic.But after each one, I could never return to being the person I had been before.When most people hear the word death, they think of physical death. Yet some…
They Said They Were Changing Your Brand – They were dismantling you. Tuakiri Autophagy — reclaiming the self that was taken.
I want to tell you what forty-one years of systematic identity assault looks like from the inside.It looks like success.It looks like promotions, adaptability, professional development, and being told you’re a good cultural fit. It looks like learning which version of yourself to bring to which room. It looks like getting really good at making…
The Faith That Couldn’t Hold Your Actual Life – What Wairua Autophagy is, and why spiritual clearing changes everything that follows.
I want to ask you something.Not about what you believe. About what you carry.Because there’s a version of spiritual life that sustains you. That orients you. That makes the difficult things bearable and gives your life a shape that holds.And there’s a version that is slowly killing you from the inside — made of shame,…
You Left. The Patterns Didn’t. What Whakapapa Autophagy Is, and Why It Has to Come First.
I want to tell you something I wish someone had told me at 17.You can leave. You can move five hours away, start over, cut contact, change your number, build an entirely new life in a different city with different people, a different job, and a different name if you want.The patterns will be waiting…
