It can be hard to explain how a seemingly simple sequence of steps can facilitate profound self understanding and transformation. I have performed them myself for 12 years and still, sometimes, I have to suspend my disbelief and just trust that what is felt is real. Perhaps the only thing that is real. This is my understanding. 

All of our old stories and patterns live in our bodies, in our cells. They can shape how we hold ourselves and walk through life. Some of them aren’t even our own. They are those of the ones that have come before us, rewritten for the next generation, waiting to be told anew. Through Ka’alele’au we learn to hear those stories, to feel them deep within, explore them, embrace them and transform them into a new way of being. So that we can move forward with a knowing of the purpose they served, but no longer limited by it. 

Ka’alele’au is not something easily understood by the mind or logic. It’s a “back door” approach that facilitates self awareness and acceptance at a level and speed that could never be achieved by mental self enquiry or talk therapy. Here there is only rhythm, posture, balance, perpetual motion, arrival and coming back to oneself. Movements that express the music, ourselves, our emotions and all that is around us. Movements that connect us to everything we are and can be, to our ancestors and to our source. Movements that open up the pathway, ultimately, to self mastery. 

By changing the way we move in Ka’alele’au we change everything. The past, the present and the future – all at the same time. Whether it is the straightening of a foot, the dropping of a shoulder or letting go in the hips, it guides our cells to rearrange themselves into a new and more contributing pattern. So whilst the changes may sometimes be subtle on an external level they are profound on an internal one. Pain shifts, muscles loosen, thoughts are reshaped, energy is gathered and emotions – good, bad and ugly – are welcomed home. 

Ka’alele’au builds our awareness of our external and internal environments and how we relate to them. We begin to understand that everything is in a relationship with us. Everything is family. Through it we find our centre, and ourselves at the centre of our universe. We learn to navigate the situations that present themselves in the dance that is our life with grace and dignity, from the centred place of deep knowing and compassion of our Self. And that is magic. 

Joy Barber Hua – Kahuna Sciences student