Dr Matt James Interviewed By Dr Jane Lewis
Well, aloha, everybody and welcome to this podcast today. I’m absolutely delighted to have as my guest interviewee, Dr. Matt James. Matt is my teacher and I’m really proud to acknowledge him as my teacher. I studied Huna with his dad originally and for the last 15 years, I’ve been studying with Matt, and I also teach for him.
So, I’m inviting him on today to talk about his perspective on Huna and share some of his wisdoms. The depth of his knowledge is incredible, the depth of his knowledge about Huna. And also about Ho’oponopono because as part of his clinical psychology degree, he researched the effectiveness of Ho’oponopono, the Hawaiian forgiveness process. He’s a hula drummer and chanter. He’s played at the Merrie Monarch, which is the Olympics of hula. And I’m truly delighted to welcome you here this evening. So, Matt thank you so much for being here.
M- Thank you for having me on. I really do appreciate it. I’m looking forward to seeing you all the time at Huna, just you bring such an amazing energy to the workshop and are just such an excellent example of these teachings. So, thank you very much for helping to really make a different on this planet. I appreciate it.
J- Thank you. Yes, thank you so much. Let’s start by talking about your Huna journey. How did you get into it? Where did, where did you start? Where did you feel the call?
M- Wow, those are, those are some really big moments in my life, I have to admit. And I think everyone hears the call at a different time. I heard the call at a very early age. And I would watch my father meditate. So, I actually started off with meditation as a five year-old. And when I share this story with students, I always say that I’m, my initial intention was I wanted to be like my dad. Kids want to hang out with their parents and yet, one of the things as a five year-old that I immediately noticed as I began to meditate, I had a better control over my energy. I had so much energy as a kid and this meditation helped. And so I continued to meditation regularly. And my first experience with Huna came from my father. My father met a person over here on the island of Hawaii named Uncle George. And George Na’ope is the founder of the Merrie Monarch Hula Festival and was a master of masters. And Uncle decided for whatever reason, trusting his gut, trusting his, what the Hawaiians call, na’au, connected my father with a person named Papa Bray. And Papa Bray’s father was one of the last practising Kahunas here in the islands of Hawaii, and claimed a lineage that went back 25 generations. His son, David Bray, Jr., otherwise known as Papa Bray had no one to pass the lineage on to. And after instructing my dad and teaching him, gave us permission as a family to begin running these workshops here in Kona. And we ran our first one either late ’89 or early 1990. And twice year now, since then, we’ve been running them here on the island of Hawaii. I really heard my call when my father took me through Ho’oponopono at the kitchen table as a kid. I had so much, I had so much anger towards my dad for a variety of things and I was grateful because he guided me through that process and it allowed me to let go of my negative emotion around him and really laid the foundation for an incredible relationship with him. Including me getting back into Huna and I began teaching it in 1998. I began teaching Huna in 1998.
J- I remember that.
M- Yeah, I know you were there.
J- Yeah. So that was the start of your journey. What’s happened since then?
M- Well, I began teaching in 1998. I’m celebrating my, I just at the end of last year celebrated two decades of teaching.
J- Wow.
M- And it went from just a class here and there to all of a sudden, I was teaching Huna on the mainland, I was teaching it in the US, Canada, I’ve taught it in Japan, Australia. I’ve gone all the way across the pond and taught it up to this tiny little island in the United Kingdom, actually.
M- Taught at a, I think it was the Hilton on Kensington High Street, if I remember correctly. I taught a Huna workshop there.
J- Whoa
M- And so I’ve gotten to travel the world, I’ve gotten to travel the world and share this. And what I’ve learned is that, along with my own journey and becoming a teacher, becoming a Kumu in 2006. And from an elder being told, this isn’t just a choice, it’s a part of your family now, and watching my son step up and begin to teach as a 16 year-old. This is something that my family practises and what I’ve learned is that like me, so many people out there on the planet want to find more purpose. They want to have a reason why they do what they do. And they want to just shed themselves of some of these basic negative emotions that we carry around like bricks, and become pono. People want to be pono. The word pono means right. Just right with who you are and right with your connection with others. And that’s the root, that’s one of the words in the Ho’oponopono process. Ho’o, to make, pono meaning right, and right with yourself and others. So, to me, I feel like people that are on this journey, it’s very similar to my own journey and that we just want to be right with who we are, happy with what we have.
J- You mention Ho’oponopono and I know that’s been, that’s been a very significant part of your journey for several reasons. You did your clinical, your PhD, your clinical psychology PhD was all about Ho’oponopono. What prompted you to take that as your subject matter?
M- Well, as a kid growing up with this, I did my first NLP, Neuro Linguistic Programming training, when I was 11 years old. Did a fire walk with Tony Robbins, learned directly from Richard Bandler. Became a Master Practitioner from the guy who invented this. And so, kind of having this dual, this dual path presented to me, one of very spiritual and one of more on the mindset side, well, when I was younger with both of these paths, I would hear people say to me all the time, Jane, this thing that you teach, this thing that your dad does, thing thing that is in your, that’s all just in your head. And that used to really piss me off. That used to really, as a kid in 80s, I would be teenager in the 80s, and people would say it’s in your head and I’d actually argue with them. Until one day I was teaching and it dawned on me, yeah, it is all in your head. But that’s exactly why it works because your baggage is in your head and your beliefs are in your head and whether you are pono with yourself or not, it’s in your head. So why not use a technique that’s also in your head? And when I went back to school to become a doctor, I actually wanted to study a more psychological approach, our mental and emotional release, but I’m not a, I wasn’t at that time able to work with individuals one-on-one. And so, the school said, you can’t do it, that’s more clinical work, you would have to go down a different path. And so, I asked, I proposed that we study Ho’oponopono, the forgiveness process. A big part of my purpose when I decided to begin to teach was I wanted to make a different in this field. I wanted to add some credibility to it. And I know that people need evidence.
J- Yeah.
M- And they need to know that something is real. I do, too. I want to know that something is real before I do it. And so, I studied it. And I was very grateful that we got a result.
J- Yeah.
M- We got what is called a statistically significant result, which is a fancy way of saying, I proved that Ho’oponopono works. It gets rid of, in psychological terms, it’s called revenge or avoidance motivations.
J- Hmm.
M- Revenge, like, I want to get this person back or I want to stay away from them. We would call it here in the US, we would call it a grudge.
J- Yes.
M- It gets rid of you holding a grudge that either wants you to get revenge or stay away from the person. And with everyone in the test group who received Ho’oponopono, they all had a reduction. And most of ’em, a complete reduction of just that negative feeling towards another individual. And it was so helpful to do that. I wrote it in my fifth book that I published called Ho’oponopono. I talked about this study in there to explain to people, we’re beyond arguing whether or not these things work or not, it’s whether you want them to work, whether you’re ready for them to work.
J- Right. One of the things that I hear a lot from students of mine and people who follow me on Facebook and things, is, they talk a lot about resentment.
M- Mmm.
J- And one of the things I talk about is using Ho’oponopono to help them with resentment. Do you have any thoughts on that?
M- Resentment is a very similar concept to revenge and avoidance motivation. And resentment, when I was becoming a doctor, it was one of the sub-categories of that. And so, the way you want to look at it is that the resentment that you carry is a form of a negative emotion. And the gift of Ho’oponopono is that we sometimes hold our negative emotions and connect it to a person. So, where I see Ho’oponopono used the most is when someone has wronged you and you’re holding on to resentment, you’re holding on to anger, sadness, you’re holding on to a desire to get them back or stay away. And so Ho’oponopono is used for that. There are other techniques. There’s a release process called ho’oku’u, where you bring in energy and you let go of just general baggage. And that’s more for baggage that you hold within yourself that may or may not be connected to someone else. So when I’m working with someone or a group of students, I like to take them through both. Because we sometimes hold our negative emotions towards someone and sometimes we just hold on to them ourselves.
J- Right. And what about self-forgiveness? Is that the arena of self-forgiveness?
M- Well, self-forgiveness, people ask me this all the time. I just taught a group of people in San Diego and in Irvine there in California. I just did two back-to-back trainings and it’s the number one question that I get when I’m bringing up the idea of Ho’oponopono. It’s well, the person that I need to forgive is me. A part of the Ho’oponopono process is to o’oki, which in Hawaiian, it means to cut. And you can’t cut with yourself. You can’t disconnect from you. And so, when you do the process, and you guide your students through the process, right Jane?
J- Oh, yeah.
M- Yeah, and so when you do it, you’re doing this process with other people and you’re doing it in your mind. There were three main ways that people did Ho’oponopono in ancient Hawaii. One was in their mind. The other one was face-to-face. And the third one was a combination of the two. Because you weren’t allowed to bring an intensity when you had a face-to-face discussion with someone if the purpose was to become pono. And so, doing it in your mind, these people that you’re doing it with, they’re actually your interpretation of who they are. They’re basically you. And so, it’s considered Ho’oponopono because if you learn how to forgive others and get forgiveness from them, you’re actually getting self-forgiveness. And so, we learn who we are through our connections with others. So even my clients when they’re like, I need to do this with me, I respond with, we need to do this with other first. So that you can learn to become forgiving of yourself.
J- Right. That’s such a great description of, explanation of Ho’oponopono. I think a lot of people, a lot of people don’t even learn it with the cord cutting when they’ve heard it
M- No
J- from other places.
M- Yeah, and I truly do appreciate Joe Vitale. I just want to be clear on that because it’s brought more awareness to Ho’oponopono. So I have a level of gratitude for that. And I also, my father studied with more Morrnah Simeona, who was Dr. Hew Len’s teacher. A version that we teach from comes from the lineage, the, into my family, as well as Morrnah Simeona’s approach. And Dr. Hew Len and Joe Vitale decided to simplify the technique because they weren’t sure if Westerners would be able to handle the concept of energy and of higher self. And so, I want to say this with as much respect as possible, first of all, I’m sorry is more of a Western. You don’t say I’m sorry. If there was one tool that I would want your listeners to take away from this podcast is that in the Hawaiian language, you say please forgive me. You don’t say I’m sorry because I’m sorry is a statement of being that doesn’t ask for any response. You can’t actually translate I’m sorry into Hawaiian.
J- Right.
M- It’s e kala mai ia’u, please forgive me. So, that part of the prayer is more western. Here’s where I have a little bit of philosophical difference. I’ve worked with people who have been raped, who have been beaten, who have been, gone through the most horrific things that I don’t need to go into details. You would never tell someone who has violated your boundary that severely, I love you and thank you.
J-Yeah.
M- But what you would do is you would give forgiveness from your heart with love.
J- Yeah.
M- And that’s where I love you comes from. So, I love you? No, you wouldn’t say that. You would say, please forgive me. I forgive you. And you would give that forgiveness with love. And you would be thankful for the lesson. Not thankful for the act of what occurred.
J- Right.
M- And so, three big takeaways is you don’t need to do the Ho’oponopono process, you can begin to live it in your actions by giving up I’m sorry, by saying, forgive me instead of I’m sorry, by giving the forgiveness with love, and learning how to focus on what is the lesson? The uno-ai, the seed that you’re meant to bring in, what is that lesson? And that’s where you have gratitude. Because I’ve had horrible things happen to me in my life and I want to learn the lessons from them.
J- Yeah.
M- I want to get the lessons.
J- Yeah. Brilliant, thank you. Thank you for that clarification because I think there is some, there is confusion out there about Ho’oponopono and what’s right and where it all fits, and I think that’s a great explantation that you’ve just given us. Thank you.
M- Yeah, I have a lot of people that come in and they say, oh, I know Ho’oponopono, I know the prayer. And I say I’m so grateful that you do because that can help you on a daily basis and the technique that I’m about to share and that Jane shares with all of you who are listening, the technique is where the prayer came from. And it takes the process to a deeper level because of the cut. And because of this respect that we have for the lineage that energy flows through.
J- And by the cut, you mean that cutting of the cords, the energetic cords of connection at the end of the process.
M- Correct, yeah.
J- Yeah. And that’s pretty good, as well, for, in terms of just keeping your own energy fields clean.
M- It does, a lot of people have a sensitivity to energy. I’ve met more and more people now who have a level of sensitivity to energy, to being in other people’s energy space and whatnot, and so, by cutting, it really does help you learn how to manage your own energy. And it also helps you to bring in just like a nice, fresh charge of energy as you go through it.
J- Mmm, yeah. So just talking more widely about energy, one of the things that I’m finding with students is that there’s a lot of interest in energy in a kind of, in a general sense, either in terms of how to keep their own energy clean because they’re, like you, I’m finding people are more sensitive, but also just in terms of utilising energy. Do you have any thoughts on that? It’s a general question I know, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.
M- Well, first of all, we’re already connected to energy. Whether that’s from a personal source based on a religious faith or a spiritual, I love it when people say that they don’t really believe in energy. And I’m like, well, you have seven billion billion atoms in your body. If you took one out and split it, the city you’re in would go bye-bye. That’s a lot of energy you’ve got. And so, really to me, it’s through learning things like Huna, through learning things like Reiki or any form of energy work, prana healing, you name it, it teaches you how to harness the energy that you already have and direct it. Kind of like teaching a kid a sport. A child may know how to kick a ball, but do they know how to kick it the right way and with the ability to move the ball down a field or to hit a ball like a tennis racket? Anyone can take a tennis racket and hit a ball, but can you keep it in the court?
J- Right.
M- So, learning how to do energy work takes the energy that you already have and teaches you how to channel it. And to me, purpose comes from higher self and purpose comes from that connection to your higher self, what the Hawaiians called alma-kua. And so, harnessing your energy begins to bring in a deeper level of purpose.
J- Right. And there’s that old saying, isn’t there? Energy flows where attention goes.
M- Exactly, and so the more focus and attention you’re able to put into the work that you do, then the easier it gets for you to harness your energy, maintain your energy, and really then, bring in that connection with source.
J- Right. And in terms of what Huna itself has done both for you and for students, what have you seen in your journey in terms of how people have benefited from Huna?
M- The number one thing that I’ve heard from students over the past 20 years that I have been teaching this is that connection to purpose. I really, I hear more and more now, even from younger, younger generation, I started teaching in my 20s and I’m hearing 20 year-olds coming about it though, there needs to be more of a reason why, I don’t want to just go work at a job for 20 years, I don’t want to just go to these trainings or travel, I need more purpose in my life.
J- Right.
M- And Huna brings in that purposefulness because it helps you to become right with who you are through connection with energy, through techniques like Ho’oponopono. When you have more purpose in your life, you know who you’re meant to be.
J- Yeah.
M- So the three basic energies, being, doing, having. Creation energy, transformation, completion. And many of us from western society, we start off thinking, if I want to have happiness, I need to go buy the right house, buy the right car, have this, have that. And many people elevate about that and go, it’s not about having items, it’s about what am I doing?
J- Right.
M- So they do different paths, they do different trainings, they do different career journeys, and one day, they wake up and they go, I’ve done it all and I’m still not happy. True happiness comes from knowing who you are, and that’s called having a purpose. Because then if you know who you are, what you’re meant to do flows from that. And the things that you’re meant to have, they come to you.
J- Yes.
M- And I think the biggest thing that Huna gives people, or any spiritual training for that matter, any spiritual teaching, is it brings in a level of purposefulness. It brings in a connection to a bigger reason why you’re doing what you’re doing. When you have that, you can navigate just about anything. When you have that, you have faith, you have faith in yourself. And so, Huna does that. And I always say to people after I do a Huna segment, or a Huna weekend, or even our Huna workshop that you and I both teach at, Jane, I say to them, if Huna is your path, I’m grateful and I’ll be seeing more of you. And if it’s not, I hope that this has inspired you to connect up with something that will bring you purposefulness because that is really lacking in our western culture.
J- Yeah, yeah. I’m wondering, ’cause I see quite a lot of people, they’ve got sadness, they want to heal sadness or depression or they feel a bit lost. Do you think that this is because of a lack of purpose? Is that why there is, there seems to be so much of this about?
M- Yeah, we just ran a workshop in California. We did a survey ahead of time. And the two biggest emotions that came up in the survey ahead of time were fear and sadness, that these are the two biggest things that people are dealing with. And of course there’s going to be a difference from country to country. And there’s a lot of general fear here in the US. And there’s also a lot of sadness. And my students who live in other countries report very similar experiences there. This can come from a variety of things. Now, I’m putting more on my doctor hat than my Kumu of Huna, but it usually comes from an accumulation of baggage, of an unwillingness to deal with situations when they come up, an unwillingness to face their baggage. And as that accumulates, it can become generalised. And a person can just feel a general form of sadness. And when that happens, that’s where a technique like Ho’oponopono can be very helpful because a lot of us, we point our finger. We point our finger at someone else and say, I feel this way because of that person.
J- Yeah.
M- And the problem is that when you do that, I’ve heard the old saying, three fingers are pointing back, but I have a different viewpoint on it. When you point at someone else, what you’re actually doing is you’re saying they have control over you. No one can make you feel something. Someone can do something and you can have an emotional response, but the moment you say they made me feel that way, you’ve given away your empowerment.
J- Yeah.
M- And so, Ho’oponopono helps you to let go of the sadness. Ho’oku’u, the release technique, Jane, that you take your students through, that helps you get rid of sadness. And it’s, for some people, it’s one and done. And for some people, it’s peeling back the layers of an onion. As you go through it, you then learn how to deal with the baggage when it comes up. And I just recently had a loss, one of my elders, one of my teachers, she passed away. And I had sadness. That’s sadness in the moment. That’s called being human. But if all of a sudden I found myself 20 years later still crippled because of the loss, that’s baggage.
J- Yeah.
M- And she would’ve never wanted me to carry the sadness for very long. She would expect that I would feel sad, but she would’ve said to me, you have techniques and when you’re ready, do Ho’oponopono and release that sadness, so that you can move forward, that you can move forward in life. You can’t move forward if you’re dragging a big bag of bricks behind ya.
J-Indeed.
M- Well, I guess you can if you work out enough, but I think you get my analogy.
J- I get your analogy. So we had a couple of, we had a couple of more, more specific questions,
M- Of course.
J- invited people to ask them. So one person was saying that for beginners, people starting on their Huna journey, that perhaps had a bit of familiarity but not much, are there any, is there any one basic technique, or are the any particular techniques that you think are better for beginners?
M- Well, I mean, for beginners, and I love that because we’re all a beginner. Every morning when you wake up, you’re a beginner again. I always see myself as a student and in, from the teachings of Huna, something that strengthens your foundation every day. I always talk to my students about maintaining and having a daily practise, a daily practise of Ho’oponopono, a daily practise of gratitude, a daily practise of reframing, looking at a situation and finding a positive in it. And the benefits of these things, a daily practise of meditation.
J- Right.
M- Man, there are so many studies that have been done here in the US on the benefits of meditation, even just a 15 to 30-minute. And you know, the people say all the time, well, how, I don’t have enough time to do it or whatnot. And I appreciate that we live busy lives, I’ve got two kids, I travel a lot, I get it. And if you don’t make these basic things be a part of your daily practise, then you lack foundation. And any advanced technique that Jane or I could teach you, it has no foundation to sit on.
J- Right.
M- So I take drumming and chanting, and there are some things that I can do from a chanting perspective and it’s because I have a foundation with my voice and I do my vowel work. And I can, I drum and if I don’t practise my drumming, how can I learn any advanced techniques? I get students that come to me all the time, when do we learn how to remove energies from other people or clear a space? And I’m like, well, can you clear your own space, meaning your body?
J- Yeah, yeah.
M- Can you meditate? Can you silence that chatter in your mind? Because if while you’re doing energy work with someone, that chatter’s going off in your mind, it’s added into the energy.
J- Yeah.
M- And so, for beginners and for people that aren’t, that don’t think of themselves as beginners, you’re always a beginner. And so I began my morning with an intention for today, with a meditation, and at the end of the evening tonight, I’ll wrap up with Ho’oponopono. It’s my daily practise.
J- Brilliant, thank you. And another of a say more specific genre was, what do you feel that the best practises, or the best practise, to improve the connection between the conscious and the unconscious mind?
M- Oh, very nice. That’s one of the reasons why I, and this is going to take us slightly outside of Huna, but I’ll bring it back to Huna. It’s important, the reason why we continue to teach Huna at my company here in the US is because NLP is a study of the conscious, unconscious. So, mindfulness-based practises and techniques that help you to have more congruent communication, even like psychology or basic courses on communication skills, those really help. Also, learning about your values and your beliefs. Which we talk about that at Huna.
M- There are ways of letting go of limiting beliefs. And that strengthens the connection with the unconscious mind. What also strengthens the connection with the unconscious mind is doing energy work because the unconscious mind communicates through symbology and through much bigger picture concepts, more abstract ideas. Doing studies of energy helps you as an individual to hear your na’au. Your na’au is your core. My favourite example is, we’ve all had an experience of walking into a house that didn’t feel right. And you skin feels weird and your gut feels weird. Then in western thinking, we sometimes override that feeling with, oh, I have indigestion. I shouldn’t have eaten that burrito for lunch or something. It’s usually the energy kicking in, and learning how to recognise that, learning how to recognise that feeling and hear it, hear it from your unconscious mind, that comes from being able to understand the energy, and what energy that you’re feeling and what energy is coming in.
J- And what tips would you give people for really understanding and hearing the energy? How can they start hearing the energy, feeling the energy, knowing what the energy is saying to them?
M- Well, they better keep taking classes with you, first of all, I mean. Familiarity, it’s like, learning it. So, think of the four bodies. We have four bodies. A spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical.
J- Right.
M- You need to learn energy on all four levels. You need to learn just what energy is from a spiritual perspective. You need to learn the source of your energy. Does it come from your higher self? Do you believe in God? Do you believe in quantum fields? Whatever it is, just your atoms in your body. Okay, so that’s your source of energy. Then, mindset. How do you channel that energy? How do you move it? How do you become familiar with it? ‘Cause energy flows where attention goes, so learning what attention to put into energy. Then emotions, letting go of negative emotions through things like Ho’oponopono. And clearing up the emotional body creates that channel. And then physical.
J- Yeah.
M- Learning how to harness the energy and be able to move it from a physiological perspective. Those are the things that help you really get better at connecting with energy and working with energy and you become a clearer channel by doing that.
J- Brilliant. Well, I could talk to you forever about this sometimes. So, but it’s probably time to be rounding it off. Any kind of concluding thoughts, things that, big takeaways that you would like, that you think people would appreciate?
M- Absolutely. One of the ways that I love to just always kind of wrap things up is first of all, thank you, again, for having me on. I really do appreciate it. And for all of you listening, I appreciate you taking the time to hear this. In life, discover who you are. Learn who you are and what is right for you. Many people spend so much time thinking that they have to do things for others. And learning how to take that time for yourself. And learning how to connect with what truly matters to you, that will help you bring in more and more purpose. And, you know, Jane, I’ve never met someone at the end of their life who says, I followed my heart, I trusted my gut, I lived life to the fullest, that was a horrible idea. I’ve never heard that. I have heard people say should have, could have, would have.
J- Yeah.
M- And, and so for me, what I share with my kids is what I share with my students, which is if your heart and your gut say yes, trust it, connect with it, and pursue that. Because it will bring you a level of purposefulness in life.
J- Brilliant. Oh, Matt, thank you so much. That’s been absolutely wonderful and I’m sure our listeners are going to really, really enjoy it when we put it out. So thank you so much, it’s been really great talking with you.
M- You’re welcome. Thank you, again, for having me on.
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