A wonderful way to feel the energy of Hawaii, gently tone your body, strengthen your core, and enjoy dancing to the beautiful music of Hawaii. No experience necessary. Men, Women age 16 years and older welcome!   

Mondays

6 - 7 pm 

Tuesdays 

11 am - 12 noon 

Saturdays

8:30 - 9:30 AM 

   

  Wednesdays    

6 - 7 PM     

Join Frances Kai-Hwa Wang and June Tanoue for The

Ha (Breath) of Writing Workshop. 

Early Bird
Registration Discounts

Frances Kai-Hwa Wang

Hauoli Makahiki Hou (Happy New Year)!  May we face this

new year with great courage and aloha to help overcome the many challenges facing us and our 'aina (land). 

To begin, let me share a little more of my trip to the Big Island of Hawaii this past November.

I always thought that I wanted to be buried on the Big Island.  But lately I've been feeling quite at home here in Chicago, Oak Park to be precise.  When I thought about my death, I wasn't sure where I wanted to be buried or have my ashes scattered - here in Oak Park or Big Island.  So I thought it's time to go back to the 'aina and see how I felt.

 

It had been a year and a half since I was home.  My trip to Hawaii this time seemed different.  In the past I traveled especially to visit my parents.  They were my primary connection to the 'aina.  Now my 3 brothers, my sister and their 'ohana (family), and my aunties, my uncles and my cousins are my remaining blood link.

In addition to my family, it was an opportunity to reconnect with Papa Henry's haumana (students)

 at their annual retreat.  It has been at least 5 years since the last time I joined them. I felt a call to be grounded in that healing tradition again.  I was right.  The trip home strengthened my roots and connection there.  

The spiritual and healing practice of

la'au lapa'au(healing with spirituality and medicinal plants) is about body, mind and spirit being in balance, being

pono (right with yourself and your god).  That takes discipline, patience and lots of love.

People sometimes think that spiritual practice is light-weight.  But the teachings of Papa Henry Auwae come out of the depths of the 'aina and through our pu'uwai(heart)

Papa Henry spoke in simple sentences that had great wisdom - such as "Love yourself, love God."  What does that really mean?  Sometimes one needs to meditate on the sentence for awhile to really understand.

The retreat for me was a way of coming back to myself.  I was doing something that I loved. We were all in a warm beautiful environment - camping, eating good, nutritious food in the open air, and enjoying the wonderful company of la'au brothers and sisters.

I forgot about my busy urban life, got into the swing of things and opened up.  We worked hard, and we relaxed.  The warmth and the rocky 'aina beneath my feet helped me slow down and become more aware.  The wind on my skin - sometimes gentle, sometimes blustery was a pleasure to feel.

Nature was speaking to me in different ways.  I only needed to pay attention.  I was surprised that when the wind occasionally picked up and whipped around the trees and tables, people just went about doing what they are doing easily and naturally - attuned to the environment.  

June Kaililani Tanoue

Kumu Hula

 I  highly recommend reading Tom Peek's new novel 'Daughters of Fire', winner of the 2013 Benjamin Franklin Silver Finalist Award for Popular Fiction.  This is the first novel, that I've read, set on the Big Island of Hawaii and it is a page-turner! 

'Daughters of Fire' illuminates how the islands' transformation into a tourist mecca and developers' gold mine sparked a Native Hawaiian movement to reclaim their culture, protect sacred land, and step into the future with wisdom and aloha.

When I heard that Peek was appearing in Ann Arbor for a couple of talks in late October, I went to meet him and his wife Catherine Robbins.  It was a memorable meeting - like meeting long lost 'ohana.

Tom told me that he had passed his manuscript by Hawaiian kupuna before he published to be sure his book was pono. He got their blessing.  I thought I'd give you a taste of his book by sharing an exerpt with permission from Tom and his publisher Koa Books.  Here is Chapter 22 for your reading pleasure!

 Daughters of Fire by Tom Peek
Chapter 22   A Meeting with the Old Stones

Saturday, June 10,  Almost Sunrise on Hualalai . . .
 
Beyond the turmoil of resort preparations, scientific debate, and political maneuvering, others with a keen interest in Hualalai followed the dictates of higher powers that be. Kapu Hawai'i leader Wailani Henderson and her aging mentor, Aunty Keala Huelani, stealthily  trekked  the volcano's  flank in a chill left from  the night winds blown down Mauna Kea. The upland jungle was steely gray in the dull light reflecting off the sky, and the vegetation, drenched with overnight  condensation,  still hummed  with crickets.  A white speck high above them - an 'io - circled close to the heavens.

Traveling before dawn was a solemn time, but it was essential that no one detect the two intruders on the now heavily secured Lapalapa Ranch. Both had blood roots to the land upon which they now trespassed, and the elder - two generations older than her companion - knew all of its secrets. She had the knowledge Wailani lacked, but the younger Hawaiian was willing to honor her ancestry with action, and together they made up for the middle generation absent on the trek - thirty years of Hawaiians made impotent by their vain efforts to fit into the world foreigners had brought to the archipelago.

Wailani carried a special parcel under her arm, and Aunty Keala guided the way. Twigs and grasses cracked under their callused feet on an overgrown path that few had traveled during the past five decades. Passing jungle-covered cinder cones, they descended the slope to the hidden place.

The night before, in the glow of campfire embers, Aunty Keala had recalled her first trek down that path, guided by a family elder now long dead. Secrecy was even more important then, right after statehood, as societal scorn for "pagan" practices was harsh. Aunty Keala had shared with the young activist tales of social and political repression each time someone new took over the islands, and the quiet heroism of each clandestine resistance. Despite those hardships, Aunty Keala explained, a few Hawaiians always maintained the link to their ancient past and secretly tended the sacred places to honor gods disgraced in the eyes of the Americans who now controlled the islands.

"If memory lives," the stout, graying woman had said, "the politics of the day don't matter." Smiling, she reported that the ancestral chain of memory for this area had never been broken because someone - under the protection of darkness - had always traveled to the ancient stone shrine to keep in touch through prayer.

The elder had said much in the firelight, but she did not reveal the  deepest  meaning  of  the  place.  That, she  knew,  Wailani  must discern with her own na'au - her primal instincts - aided by ancestral memories in her blood passed down from family members who had walked this path before.

As far as Aunty Keala knew, no one besides her had made the trek for at least two decades. But now, the stone shrine - even the forest in which it stood - was in peril. Within a year, the old ranchland would be a subdivision, urban sprawl on the commuting edge of Kailua-Kona. So, one last time, they of the blood must visit in secret, making their offerings and exchanging knowledge with the ancestral stones.

                       *******************
Copies of Daughters of Fire are also available at Halau i Ka Pono for $20.  Thanks to Koa Books and Tom Peek, all proceeds directly benefit the Halau.  Contact june.tanoue@zlmc.org for your copy today!