Using Huna to Heal Trauma

Healing trauma is one of the most important things that we can do.  I am not a medical doctor. I am a PhD sort of a doctor, and I should also make it clear that when I talk about trauma, the definition I'm using is not the tight definition of DSM-V, that's the American Psychiatric Handbook, that, sort of, Bible of these things. It's a much looser version of what we mean by trauma.

Why is it important? 

One of the things that I found on working with clients over the years, is that a lot of clients experience trauma-like responses or trauma-like symptoms, if you like.

It may be they've had narcissistic parents. It may be that they've had addictive behaviours in the family, a parent or a partner. It could be that they're feeling violated in some way. Sometimes if a loved one really violates our values, does something that, for us, is just appalling, even though for them, it may not be. So, I don't know, lies, affairs, that sort of thing. 

Sometimes it's domestic abuse. I've had clients with domestic abuse and sometimes it's childhood experiences or the experiences of children in the family. All these sorts of things can produce a kind of traumatic response.

Trauma has such long fingers.  So, I wanted to talk about how Huna can help with that because I see it everywhere. I see it in so many clients and in so many people I know. So, healing is possible. That's the good news and it's possible in a number of ways. Huna isn't the only way, but it is possible in a number of ways.

I'm gonna talk about what trauma is. I'll talk a little bit about how you can heal it in different ways and I'll talk about some of the things that Huna offers, specifically in relation to trauma. 

What is Trauma?

Now, the DSM-V, the Bible of the psychiatric community, the DSM-V talks of trauma as it implies a threat of death or a threat of violence or actual violence, including sexual violence or injury. It's those sorts of things. It doesn't include getting traumatised by watching something on social media. It doesn't include getting traumatised because you were bullied as a child.

However, the real truth is that trauma, the experience of trauma, how we experience things is very, very subjective. For some people being bullied as a child has no impact whatsoever, but for some people, it has a profound impact. For some people having narcissistic parents has no impact or relatively little impact, but for others, it has a long impact right up into the fifties, the sixties, even into the seventies, throughout life.

So, the tight medical definition of trauma is very tight, but many people experience trauma-like symptoms. It's not actually physical injury, or it's not witnessing something absolutely appalling in the flesh, it's not having a family member who's had one of those experiences. It's more than that.

Trauma creates an extremely stressful response in the body. It's big stress. It's not just that every day, "Oh, I've had enough of my boss. It's just so stressful." It's not even that, "I'm overworked," sort of a stress. It's that stressful feeling of that tightness in the chest, that anxiety, that fear, that what they call, they call it a startle response, being easily startled by things that don't actually startle other people.

It's feeling fearful, it can be feeling anxious. It can be irritability, just for no reason, becoming angry or irritable for no reason. Sometimes people become distant, they dissociate, they can't trust people.

All these things can be, I'm not saying they are, but all these things can be symptoms of trauma can be consequences of a traumatic experience, whether it's a traumatic experience as an adult or traumatic experience in childhood. The traumatic experiences in childhood have very, very long fingers.

I know for myself, I was bullied as a kid quite badly at school, both in Prep school, so, when I was eight, nine, ten, and later on. I found it really difficult to trust people and I also found it really difficult to relate closely to women because I was in all girls educational establishments, and it was the women, it was the girls, and, actually, a couple of the teachers who bullied me.

My experience of women growing up, wasn't great and it took me a long time before I really began to have good girlfriends, women that I could trust and allow women into my life. I was much more comfortable with men for a long time because men didn't bully me. 

Those childhood experiences, even the experiences of feeling, you know, where the family is very unstable, that can have a long-term effect on people. Neglect, obviously, can have an effect and, of course, sexual abuse and domestic violence around the place or verbal abuse from a parent or from other kids.

All these things can have an impact. If all these things can have an impact, if all these things can affect us through our long legged life, all the way through to, as I say, twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies. I've come across women in their seventies who are still experiencing the impact of things that happened to them when they were small, when they were 10, 11, 12.

If it can have such long fingers, then how can we do something about it? How can we heal it? Now, there are a number of basic tools and techniques and tips that you can use. So, for example, mindfulness, absolutely brilliant for helping reduce anxiety, movement, exercise, very good for moving stuff through the body.

Annie Stoker, who's a head of coaching at One Of Many, Annie has an exercise where she has you scream into a towel, screaming out the emotions, the frustration, the anger into a towel. So, moving it out, moving it through the body.

There are, obviously, psychological approaches. You can do things like the CBT, cognitive behavioural therapy, which is about learning how to change your thought patterns, because one of the things that happens with trauma is that we often ruminate over it, we recreate it, we keep recreating it in our lives.

If you keep recreating it, rethinking about it, then it's going to influence everything that happens to you. So, CBT is a way of learning how to change your thinking about the trauma, about the experience.

Another way is EMDR, which is the eye movement desensitisation. So, it's literally working with your eye patterns, your eye movements to help you desensitise from trauma.

There's, in NLP, there's a thing called the fast phobia cure, and, actually, you can apply that to trauma, you can use that for healing trauma.

There's also somatic re-experiencing, which is another way of going through it.

Huna on Healing Trauma

There are a number of different options out there. But, of course, the one that I want to talk about is Huna, and what Huna has to offer, because I've worked with clients. 

I've worked with clients who've been sexually abused as kids. I've worked with clients who've been in interesting domestic situations, maybe not physical violence, but certainly abuse. I've worked with clients who have had rape. Yes, I have worked with rape client. I've worked with clients who've had really bad experiences separating, leaving a relationship, where the relationship's been fundamentally messy.

I've personally worked with clients to help them heal a number of dramatic experiences using Huna and Huna techniques. Certainly within the Huna school, where I teach, the entire spectrum of bad experiences, negative past experiences, which have a traumatic, create a traumatic response, we've used Huna to help people to heal themselves.

I've done work with veterans suffering from PTSD, using a combination of Huna and something called timeline therapy. So, it's got an application across the whole piece. One of the things with Huna is, there's a lot in Huna about mindfulness and mindfulness is so powerful in helping sooth the system, bring down the levels of anxiety.

One is the, we call it the expanded awareness, the Hakalau technique, very powerful for reducing that sensation of discomfort, and bringing down the energy, bringing down the stimulation in the system.

There's also the meditation on the light, Huelani, which is a beautiful meditation because meditation is a really powerful way of helping calm the mind, reduce fear, and bring you into a sense of peace, because so often when we are feeling traumatised, we really are not at peace, so, that sense of being at peace.

There's a whole set of releases within Huna. Now, the one that I use most commonly is called Ho'oku'u. Now, Ho'oku'u is typically used for releasing anger, sadness, fear, guilt, so, negative emotions, and it's also used for releasing limiting decisions and beliefs about ourselves and about the way life is, because one of the things that can happen with trauma is that it sets up beliefs within ourselves.

To take my own experience of being bullied, I, as a result of being bullied, I started to believe that I wasn't a good person to be around. I wasn't good to be around other people. That I wasn't nice, I wasn't likeable, and I certainly wasn't lovable.

I built up this bank of beliefs and that impacted on how I lived my life. It impacted on my ability to trust other people. It impacted on my ability to have friendships, to form relationships. It wasn't till I really got into Huna and learnt how to release that stuff, that I was able to start to form deep, meaningful relationships.

Trauma has these long fingers and these techniques, this Ho'oku'u Technique is really, really valuable in releasing that old stuff that comes, the long fingers of trauma. There's also Ho'oponopono and Ho'oponopono is the Hawaiian forgiveness process. I teach it in a slightly different way than for example, Joe Vitale and some others.

When you forgive other people, the people who bullied you, the people who violated you, the people who hurt you, when you forgive them, you really are letting go of the chains that bind you to them. Ho'oponopono is incredibly valuable in this whole healing trauma process.

I've certainly worked with people who've had unreliable parents. Often the father disappeared from the child's life at an early age. I've had a couple of clients who've had that, where their dad has disappeared and not been around when they've been growing up, and his relationship has always been really unreliable, which causes them to have certain beliefs about the way relationships might be.

Working with Ho'oponopono, in particular, forgiving Dad for being unreliable and for not being there, it's extraordinary, the changes that it creates, not just in the individual, but, actually, in their relationship with their dad or with the person who's hurt them, if the person who's hurt them is still in their lives.

Ho'oponopono doesn't mean they have to be in your lives, but if they are in your life still, then it really changes the quality of the relationship.

There are also some processes in Huna to do with connecting with higher spirit or higher source. And, if you're not spiritual, okay, that's fine. You don't need to connect with your higher self, but it really helps bring you into a sense of connection with something bigger. That sense of, we really are part of something bigger and doing that for me, personally, has really brought that inner peace and that inner tranquillity and that feeling of being grounded and connected.

Because, again, one of the things that trauma can do is make you feel disconnected from everything or want to disconnect and, really, happiness and peace comes when we feel connected.

That's some of the things that Huna can do to help with the healing of trauma. I hope it's been interesting for you. If you want to know more, do get in touch. You can book to call at secretartofhuna.com/diary or contact me on Facebook.

Get in touch because I really do believe that there's a lot of trauma that's playing out and it's particularly magnified by COVID and it doesn't have to be. There are possibilities, there are ways that we can heal these things. It doesn't have to be like that. People don't have to suffer in that way. If you're suffering and you want some help get in touch and I'll do what I can to help you.