Michelle (00:00)
Hey, ritual fam, before we start the episode today, we just wanted to let you know about a really exciting offering over on our Patreon. We have a holiday episode out now, and we talk about, you know, the highs and lows of this season, the big challenges that people face, and then use all of our ritual knowledge that we've accumulated over the last year to offer some ideas

about how to feel more grounded, more connected, and have better boundaries during this time of year. We had a lot of fun recording it and we hope that you enjoy it. If you head over to the Patreon then you can become a subscriber and get access to that episode or you can purchase it for a one-time fee. But either way we would love to see you over there and it's a really helpful way to support us.

We hope that you enjoy today's episode with Hāwea.

Welcome to Ritual Sisters, the podcast where your hosts and fellow travelers, Michelle and Kelly, explore the ways that ritual can help you feel better through the ups and downs of life. So let's take a deep breath and start this journey together.

Kelly (01:51)
Well, hello everyone. We are so grateful to be back and sharing space today with such a special guest. I am so honored to welcome her into our space today. And so Ritual Fam, for today's episode, we have Hāweatea Holly Bryson of Nature Knows. She specializes in trauma, transition and transformation.

She is a nature-based indigenous psychotherapist, individual and couples counselor, quest and rite of passage guide for 15 years, and Māori healing practitioner for 12 years. She trains facilitators and therapists in rites of passage, nature-based and experiential adventure therapy, eco-psychology, and our ways of listening. Welcome, Hāwea.


Hāweatea (02:48)
Thank you for having me.

Kelly (02:49)
You're so welcome.

Michelle (02:51)
We're so excited to have you on today and talk about ritual ceremonies, Māori healing, Western psychology, all sorts of different things. We'd love to start just by hearing more about yourself, your tribes and community bases and what season of life that you're in right now.

Hāweatea (03:02)
Yeah Kia ora. So just by way of introducing myself and calling on where I come from in the land, ⁓ Uruao, Ko Arai te Uru na waka, Ko Aoraki, Ko Mauna o Waakea na maunga, Ko Kaitahu, Ko Kaati Mamoi, Ko Waitaha na iwi, Ko Hawaiatea a ho. Yeah, just calling on my mountains and my waters. My family is from Te Waipounamu, the South Island of Aotearoa, New Zealand. I've had a home base in Hawaii Island for many years. And I was born in Australia. So I have this sort of Pacific triangle and yeah, whenever I'm heart sick or homesick for one of my other places, I just get in the sea. So yeah, very much feel that that ocean is the center. And in terms of what was the next question? What season?

Michelle (04:07)
Yeah, what season of life are you in right now?

Hāweatea (04:10)
Well, we're down here in winter and it's cold. Yeah, the land's cold, the ocean's cold. It's still, and it's very much a time of the night sky for us. And so I feel very much a part of this season in terms of we've just had, we're in the period of our Māori New Year, which is marked by when Matariki, otherwise known as Palladies, rises. And so it's sort of this three to four month period where there's like a vessel or a canoe that kind of opens up for us. And yeah, so, and similar to, you know, in Hawaii, it happens there at the start of their winter, Makali'i, same Pilates rising. And yeah, just this whole piece of at the beginning of our kind of new year, that it starts with the stillness, you know, it starts with the quiet rather than what we might associate with a new year of starting with kind of goals or action or something external. It's really this internal period and
we just sort of marked the point where those seeds start to move, they kind of start to shake in the ground and that's when a star of my family, Takuruwa, otherwise known as Sirius, is really strong in the night sky and rises in a particular way. And so yeah, in this sort of quiet period and yeah, there's you know, there's rituals around this time similar to what I hear from a lot of people that, know, when people are looking for their deeper culture and similar for Māori, that there's some practices around this time that have sort of been dormant for a while in this colonisation period and they're being revitalised now and some of them as things like, you know, around this period planting or around this marker, you know, we plant foods in the ground that we call like an umu kohu kohu fetu. So it's like a steaming earth oven to the stars. And that's a smoke that rises and goes up to those stars. yeah, that it's a time, a time that I'm feeling right now in my life too of where as that steam rises, we're back in this sort of embrace, you know, where the horizon disappears and we're back in this kind of original embrace between earth and sky, but also that it's really reminding us of the vastness of what the world we're in and how we can be brave and loving in the heart of it. So yeah, really very much a listening period.

Michelle (06:46)
Thank for sharing that. I love that you're so connected to the seasons and kind of viewing, you know, where you're at in life right now, being so tied to the season that the earth is in around you.

Kelly (07:00)
Yeah, I'm always just so… you are so poetic and I just, love listening to you. ⁓ my God, I feel like my nervous system, is just… Yeah. We also love to ask our guests what their relationship looks like to ritual and ceremony.

Hāweatea (07:09)


Yeah, well, ⁓ I mean, ceremony for me is.. I see it as a necessary cultural and therapeutic practice. And I also hear a lot right now, ceremony almost being used a little controversially. Like there's people that I speak to when they have a little barrier around ceremony, that it's something that they think they go to for someone else to do, you know, that they attend a ceremony or someone else has this kind of authority, but ceremonies for us and It awakens or has parts of ourselves speak to us. It allows us to hear, hear ourselves. Yeah. So it's a very, it's a very personal thing. And I think that that's part, part of why we need it as our, you know, I don't, I can't see it separated really from our healing or our cultural practices. Yeah. I mean, I see ritual as the heart of a home rituals that we do always serve a purpose. They, you know,
They share with us where we're at and what's going on. so I feel like there's such a, I mean, with Kelly, we've talked about this, but the way I define ritual is that it's something that we do to change us, to shift our state. But that's something so powerful in that in, in consciously knowing how we can shift our state and how necessary and how capable we are of being able to shift our state. And you know, whether that's to turn within or to increase our energy or to move energy or to connect or to cleanse, drop some shit, to put things down that it's really empowering to have to know ourselves in a way of how we can do this in these small gestures or these small actions. Or even for me personally, where ritual is something where there's markers in my day that allows me to hear beyond the noise.

Kelly (09:14)
hear beyond the noise.

Hāweatea (09:17)
Yeah, in really everyday ways where, you know, they might think of the, moments of their day, which they might call self care, like their shower time or their drive time. But really there's a ritual space in there where ritual is so instinctive, you know, it's such a neurobiological necessity in terms of it requires no thinking. So when we have a ritual, the mind doesn't have to be there. And so when we mark these, these simple actions I feel like it's a time when people can actually connect to that knowing or that listening in themselves without having to overthink it.

Michelle (09:54)
And you mentioned earlier too, kind of briefly the impact of colonization on ritual practices and kind of bringing that back. Could you share a little bit more about that?

Hāweatea (10:08)
Yeah, I work in a lot of different cultural spaces between Australia, Hawaii, Aotearoa, and also in a couple of parts of Asia. And, and then also with people who, you know, will often say, I don't have a culture and, and yet modernity is a culture, but it's a sort of a surface culture that we're all privy to. We're all exposed to, we're all, you know, expected to show up in or, you know… And so I think that that surface culture doesn't really suffice when we're in times of change, when we're in the great unknown, which, you know, we're in collectively right now. And so people have this yearning for a deeper culture. So for me, that's something that, you know, once we get beyond the wall, there's sometimes a wall around ritual or ceremony, but when we break down what it really is, that these are our life ways, you know, culture is literally how you live your life, what has meaning. And so bringing those things back so that we can have our deep culture again, but also for many Indigenous people that this was something that was punished. People were locked up, imprisoned for cultural practices, for cultural healing, for speaking language for such a long time. So there's also that happening for many of us too, you know?

⁓ There's of course those people that have kept the ahi ka, which we refer to as those home fires burning, those people who have held fiercely to their practices and yeah, give thanks to them, but that we're in a resurgence right now too and it's necessary.

Michelle (12:00)
So on your website for Nature Knows, you talk about offering both Western psychotherapy practices as well as Maori healing practices. So we were curious to learn more about what aspects of both of those practices really resonate with you and kind of how you find the balance.

Hāweatea (12:23)
Yeah, I was trained in transpersonal psychotherapy. So yet it's still in a, we could still acknowledge it in a Western lineage. And I think, cause I speak a lot about decolonizing psychotherapy that I love the way you asked that question because I think it's worth noting that what we call like the field of psychotherapy is a lineage that came through very, it's, it's, most people haven't even asked this question or thought about it, but that it really came through a colonial and academic religious actually advancement. And it was actually through the church, through a lot of countries. And so, and this was also at a time, like I just mentioned, where cultural practices were completely forbidden and were punished. And so just acknowledging that, yeah, psychotherapy, as we call it, is one lineage. And yet we've got thousands of generations of ancestral lineages, of therapeutic acts and healing acts. Yeah. And so it is useful to note that, you know, they're often omitted from our profession or minimized. And so for me, I used to see it like I had a white and a brown sock, like walking both worlds. And now something took place where I don't see the separation between the therapeutic practice I have and Māori healing.

And I think that's probably, it's in the way that, or the way of, of looking, you know, looking at the field of the family therapy ⁓ sitting with someone, the way we listen, the way we read the body. Yeah, that these are just inherent parts of our, of our healing practices.

Michelle (14:03)
Yeah, that's powerful to kind of blur the lines a little bit more and not see them as separate, even though, like you said, they do come from different lineages.

Hāweatea (14:05)
Yeah.

Yeah. And it might be more that I found my own way of that. It doesn't matter anymore because ⁓ the point is, is how we connect with someone that we're sitting with, how something comes alive or something yeah, becomes understood. And so I think for me, it's just been a matter of dropping the mind. But yes, that's very much had been my training as well. And yet in our multi healing spaces, you know, we have this one and we have these schools of learning.

And they're so rich and they're so ongoing. You can perpetually feel like a baby in that space. And that's what I love about, about these, these schools of learning is that every time we enter into that sort of Wananga or that healing space, it's, it's not like there's ever a level one, two, and three. It's that you're going to… something's going to be accessed based on what we need to hear right now, similar to when our elders tell stories. You know, I've heard some of my uncles tell the same story and it's like by the sixth time I thought, ⁓ I've heard this story uncle, like has he forgotten he's told me? And then over the years growing up, I was like, no, no, listen, there's something else in this story for me to hear right now. And so I think it's a different way of again, learning, listening, and there's sort of a humility in that for me too, which I think is sometimes distinct from Western practices where we can kind of put things in a lot of boxes rather than, you know, what's being revealed. And a really big part of Māori healing for me is that the person is carrying that information. So while I can be a listener or a reader or a mirror, the knowledge that's there, that's being shared, like if there's a pain point, there's also often in the body or in the field, there's also something wanting, you know, wanting to be seen or picked up as like the answer, the response, the response is already there. So we don't need to come up with the response for that healing. The response is sitting right next to the problem, right? Or the obstruction. And so that, that knowledge actually belongs to that person. It belongs to their field of knowing. Yeah. And I think there's something really beautiful about that, about where the center of gravity sits you know, as opposed to in our Western systems. I think we're in a… so so power struggles is such a big thing in our world right now. But I think that's why we're all drawn to practices where we can actually hear that voice in ourself or know that center of knowing. And so for us in Māori healing, you know, we really honor that there's like 12 senses. And those all those interoception, all those internal senses are ones that many of us have been distracted from or forgotten to trust or to listen to. And so the moment we can start to listen to that, you know, that's the self-healing piece. So it's really a language of supporting one another to, to know what, when something's right or something's not, what that feels like in our bodies. You know, if we want confirmation around something, how we receive that in ourselves. 

Kelly (17:30)
Wow, yeah, even just you saying like the level one, two, three, right? Those, like I think for so many of us from that Western perspective, like we're so used to the boxes. And I love you describing, right, ceremony, ritual, really connecting with that personal aspect, right? Getting to the heart, getting to the center.

Hāweatea (17:50)
Hmm. Yeah.

Kelly (17:52)
Hmm.

You know, we are kind of curious to hear more. I know you're speaking to this and I'd love to hear a little bit about just parts of your culture that have influenced your worldview the most.

Hāweatea (18:06)
it would come back to nature knows. You know that our environment, that we're embedded and every single part of my body was gifted to me from my environment as part of. ⁓ So for example, the whites of our eyes for us come from Hine Kapwa, who's the clouds. And that's why the clouds, you know, they well up and water or they get red when we're, you know, they get tense when there's a lot of tension and the nervous system is part of the same system of, of lightning, right? And so there's the, ⁓ the biggest sort of, ⁓ constant piece for me is, is how our nature knows our body actually knows and that we have, we're offered responses. Like whatever is happening in us is already happening in our landscape.

You know, so before any of us get sick in a landscape, the trees get sick because they're our, they're out to a kind of, they're our elders, right? We're the tainer, we're the younger sibling. And, and so we're not alone, but we're also amongst a giant, a giant sense of, wisdom of process. And I think it's really big too in mental health spaces because, you know, so often even just the way we talk about our emotions and we talk about our states, you know, as soon as we actually look to the landscape and we see the landscape as emotional too, it actually gives us permission to have this range in us, you know, that we don't have to cull or shape ourselves a certain way, that it's actually range, the range in us that will have us feel safer and feel that belonging in whatever, whatever we're moving through, whatever we're, we're sensing or feeling that there's actually something in that rather than the bit there being something wrong in that.

Kelly (20:11)
Mm, I love that. See the landscape as emotional. Yeah. It's so interesting too, because just today I was talking to one of my supervisees about how she loves being in nature. And so she's trying out meeting with people outside. And we had this beautiful conversation today. And man, I can't wait to send her this episode when it comes out, because there's, it's like you're thinking so much to write what people need to help their mental health. And we can easily forget that, right? Especially traditionally when we might be in an office setting with our therapist.

Hāweatea (20:49)
Yeah, and we're so used to, ⁓ you know, we live in a very two dimensional kind of reality in terms of our output and how we’re meant to show up. And that's why I kind of wanted to describe like the sense of winter, you know, because we often think that when we're in those spaces, that there's something wrong or bad, or we need to, you know, we need to hurry up, but it's the other half. And it's the other half too, that that's where our clarity comes through. You know, it's sort of like, I don't know if you've ever sat on the surface of the ocean and it's really choppy and it can make you feel quite seasick. But the moment you just go a meter beneath the surface, it's so quiet. The further we go under the water, the tide will actually pop you up. You know, you'll cross a huge distance rather than if you're swimming at the surface. And so I think about this as this other part of our being and our process. And this is a huge part of rites of passage too, where, yeah, we just are very much in an external outputting world and it hurts. It's painful. And people are pushing to kind of have value in that world when the thing that hurts is the part of ourselves that, that we don't get to hear that actually cuts through, again, cuts through that noise.

Michelle (22:14)
And we did want to ask you about the rites of passage. Can you speak more about the importance of rites of passage and what that means to you?

Hāweatea (22:23)
Yeah.

So really like how do we move from one threshold from one stage or phase of life to another. And I mean, there's so many directions to go in there. let me just chip in to right now, to us right now. I mean, I know you're both LMFTs, right? So, so yeah, one of my, some of my favorite rites of passage work is with couples and families. And again, we live kind of in a, a cultural concept where we don't allow each other to change. Even when we look at wedding ceremonies, right, I see people get married and there is actually a whole, if they haven't done a process before they get married, there's kind of already these contracts and expectations of who the other person's going to be to them and what that's going to look like. Nothing wrong with that, but we don't actually take the time to shape or create in that. And it's the same with sort of in relationships where it can be really hard to accept people's changes. And again, there's this sort of, you know, silent loyalties around the contract of who you were and who you should stay, who you should remain. And so for me, Rites of Passage is really, you know, bringing back the awareness that we are going to transform again, like as we've been talking about the land, like we're going to transform and

There is such a richness in supporting one another to do that. so yeah, one example of rites of passage for me has been just even having a family that's been going through a change, a divorce or something out on the land. And even when people are in, you know, supporting how people can honor themselves, you know, not themselves while also looking to what third.

for a couple, what third part they're creating together. But I know this is a big question, but really, I mean, we have these markers throughout our lives. And if we don't have, if we don't create spaces where we can choose and cleanse, you know, clear, it can be really confusing inside because there could be lots of loyalties that we're acting out to other people. And

And that's normally the piece where people start to feel lost or neglected and are also, you know on some level, we're neglecting that part of ourselves.

Michelle (25:01)
Yeah, I'm thinking about, you know, kind of what you're tying it back to what you were saying earlier about modern culture versus more, you know, richer cultures that we have suppressed. that, you know, I was thinking about the transition to adolescence and that seems to be a very big sticking point for a lot of families. And there's these little, I think a lot of cultures do have those little moments of like Sweet 16, Quinceñera, whatever it is, but in modern culture, it can feel so shallow. And I think, yeah, just something to deepen that. What does that actually mean? What are we actually honoring in this? Maybe that would be really helpful for families in that transition.

Hāweatea (25:49)
Yeah, that adolescent has to touch a part of themselves. Like, not like that [laughs] They have to meet a part of themselves. And often there's so much shaping from external because it's such a beautiful time adolescence because so much we learn from what we don't want to be as well as what we do want to be… ttrying, testing. In a way, we're kind of as a society in a little bit of an adolescent stage right now, if anyone who's feeling, you know, shaken up by things that they don't like that they're seeing, or they don't can't accept, you know, that's actually clarifying something in us of who we are and why we're here and where we want to put our focus and having to choose to make a choice around that. And that's very much the adolescent process. 

But while that's all coming externally, they also need a passage where they actually awaken or meet some part of themselves. And so traditionally that's really what rites of passage were. And again, today we hear rites of passage. I'm just going to keep shooting these contrasts. But we hear a lot of rites of passage as, you know, you're going to enter like this and you're going to emerge like this.

Kelly (27:05)
⁓ that is so true.

Hāweatea (27:07)
But really a rite of passage is what questions are you holding? What do you need answered? What are you looking for? Right? Like there's these questions that once we find the question that we're seeking a response to from life, then that is where the rite of passage begins. That's the entry and the exit. That piece will be taken care of in the center. And we need people to prepare us. And we also need people to bring us back home and to recognize it. And so.

Again, that's something that, you know, sometimes when we're extracting ceremonies, we forget that's the part that gets dropped is the preparation. You know, we want to prepare someone if they're going to, even if we're sending someone out into, into nature, we want to prepare them for what they're going to meet out there. We want to anchor them with some, some pieces so that when they face that, they can sit with it, they can stay with it. And similarly, when they come back.

to be heard and supported in living that out. Because when we come back, living it out, it's not, there's a whole other process in that piece as well of how we actually integrate something. Yeah, and how we're tested. We're always tested with our own gifts.

Kelly (28:30)
I love getting to this point in our conversations when we get to dive deep into ritual and pick your brain a little bit. So we're curious, what are some rituals that people can incorporate into their daily lives from the work that you do?

Hāweatea (28:51)
Well, I find ritual is a really personal fabric of our world. So I tend to like to, you know, illuminate the spaces that already exist and, and allow them to actually come forward. And a big part of deepening ritual for me is the sensory piece. So the moment we, we start to invoke more of our senses or notice more of our senses, then the actual that neurophysiological pathway of the ritual strengthens to the point where we can think about that ritual and our state can change. ⁓

Kelly (29:30)
And I feel like earlier you were talking about, was it 12 senses or could share some of those with listeners.

Hāweatea (29:37)
Yeah.

Yeah, so these are sort of our ways of knowing where, so I'm going to, I'll give the smell. I'll just go simple. So like we're doing a ritual, a lot of rituals people bring up. There's normally a smell for me, my morning coffee. It's the ground beans it’s all of it. If I slow down and notice that smell, that ritual is going to be deeper. And it's also, it's the way that our senses.

We call it kind of a watia where they, it clears out our mind, right? So there's a space and we need that space for forms and impressions and things to learn. We don't even need to understand them. We don't need to think about them, but that olfactory pathway in our nose, you know, is one of the most powerful memory centers that we have. whenever, so this is why smell can be a big part of ritual. And similarly to like all the nerve endings we have in our mouth, why so many people's rituals involve our lips, right? But what we're talking about here is we're talking about our external senses, right? Like taste or smell. And we also have internal ones. So if I'm going to gather, ⁓ for me, water is a huge one for me. It's the way that water allows heavier things to drop off the body. You know, so it's the same way water transforms in our landscape, right?

it rises, it dissipates. And similarly it can take, you know, clear heavy things off of us and it can have us hear our own voice again. But when I'm gathering water, we can use our internal senses which are very personal to us. So for example, there might be a particular taste in my mouth, a kind of sweetness if I start noticing it, that'll be a confirmation of, ⁓

This is where I'm getting my water from today, right? But we have this internal senses of a yes and a no, or of a pay attention, right? And noticing, and these are ones that I think we've forgotten to listen to. And so coming back to this piece around ritual, yeah, again, that's why I don't know if it's something to prescribe. I mean, we could come up with something together and I love like the sharing of ideas, like anytime I hear different people's rituals, right, it actually stirs something in us of, ⁓ yeah, that moment. So again, with the water, maybe, you know, one of the ones I love is taking time with the water, gathering water so that I can literally clear myself, clear my space. I don't have to think about it, but there's an effect. I trust in it. Trusting in your ritual is a really big piece and that's what happens over time. just trust in it and then it's done. And that's something that I think is really helpful is knowing, yep, that's done. There's no second guessing, no doubt. And another ritual that I may pull out of our conversation today is being with the darkness or the night sky, closing our eyes, ways we can bring our senses in. Do you have any practices or rituals that you do around when you have closed eyes or you're outside and then, you know, under the dark sky or you wait till the sun completely sets, either of you have anything?

Michelle (33:10)
I don't think with closing my eyes, that's an interesting one to think about. I do love lighting a candle and sitting with a candle. That's more of an inside one. I think that's something that to me connects with the darkness is the joy that comes with that contrast that I really look forward to the dark season for that reason to be able to sit with a little sparkle of light within the darkness.

Hāweatea (33:45)
I love that. for that, bringing that into this internal sense, it could be, and I'm going to practice this tonight. I'm going to not practice. I'm going to engage this tonight, but to close your eyes and see that candle. Doing it in inward. ⁓

Michelle (34:04)
I will definitely give that a try.

Kelly (34:07)
Michelle you'll have to keep us posted because I would love if you're open to it. I would love to hear and Michelle do you do the candle exercise in the summer too or you're saying you enjoy it more in the winter because it is a darker period?

Michelle (34:23)
I enjoy it more in the winter. I will sometimes do it in the summer, but it's definitely more of a winter ritual for me.

Kelly (34:25)

Yeah. well, I love your thoughts on this because I'm very drawn to observing when the daytime is turning into night. Like, you know how some people are really big about the sunrise? They're like, sunrise. I've really, honestly, I've rarely been that way, but I almost every day want to notice the sun setting and it turning into night.

So would you say, I don't know, is there anything with the closed eyes around that or… I am really big in this.

Hāweatea (35:09)
Yeah. And this is where I love ritual practice. Like when there's a gravity for us to something like that, we should lean into it. You know, to go and actually sit with that sunset and into the darkness. I've seen people do it inside their houses where they just don't turn the lights on because the sun sets when we're inside and it goes dark and they wait till it's dark. But like, as we're talking about our new year beginning in the winter,

Kelly (35:17)
Okay.

Hāweatea (35:38)
There's a piece here around like the days when the day is done, it's done. There's something so that is, that is a moment in our stories of transformation and what that dawn, what, what that dusk, sorry, what she represents is, and we're really in the female today, but that day is done. And so as soon as the evening becomes that day is yesterday for us. So the evening, the dark is the beginning, the seeding, the listening for tomorrow, for that next, for the day that comes second, right?

Kelly (36:16)
I have full body goosebumps because that is, you're describing exactly how I feel. And I think that's why there's such a calm for me in the evening. Yeah, because it's like, yeah, this fresh start, this new beginning.

Hāweatea (36:31)
And the dawn and the dusk, it's sort of like our breath, right? Like the inhale and the exhale. When we start to notice and listen to ourselves, we'll see where our anxiety sits. So for some people, that beginning of the evening, they have anxiety there. And it might be the same with the breath. Like if you've ever tried inhaling and suspending your breath and then exhaling and holding your breath out and noticing, and it's going to change for us, depending on where we're at, right. ⁓ but if it's holding your breath out, it's normally that we have some anxiety around letting go. have anxiety around emptying. have anxiety on who will I be without this or that, or, know, that there's something that we're maybe resisting or trying to jump away from that's calling to us. So it's just interesting. And then other times like what you're sharing, we might feel the gravity to that because there's a part of us that we're allowing to lead and saying, this is the space that I need. I would say whether it's the anxiety or the gravity, it's the same. It's like, they're just different ways of hearing this is the space that I need for others. You know, sometimes it's when it's the Dawn, we also have that that's still time before the sun comes up as well.

Michelle (37:50)
As for the listeners, what I'm hearing as part of it is more of that developing that intuitive practice of listening in to what am I being drawn towards, whether it's the gravity or the anxiety.

Hāweatea (38:05)
our guidance, right? Yeah. And I think it's really helpful spaces like this of sharing about it because often when we start talking about it, people will say, ⁓ I know that. ⁓ I felt that. Right. So it's like bringing back the language of sharing about what we're noticing without it being something that's foreign or, or left out of the conversation.

Kelly (38:28)
I'm so grateful we're talking about this, because even starting this podcast, like some people are like, yeah, rituals. And then there's some people that are like, huh. And I was going to say, I love what you shared about the trusting, the trust your ritual.

Hāweatea (38:45)
Yeah, that would be my number one advice. Yeah. Yeah. It has to hold that, you know, it's done. And we, we obviously strengthen those things over time, but that's our own clarity. And I will just say in that again, lots of the time people will, when they're, when we're learning rituals from other people will be like, did I do it right? And that's when we have to take those things inside and tune in with ourselves.

If you're, if you're feeling like, I don't know if I've cleared this space, just sit for a minute and ask, is there anything left to do here? and wait. be okay with sitting in the waiting for a moment, but don't wait too long. It's either you're going to suddenly have a thought or a feeling to do one more thing or you're not. you go, okay, it's done. It's done.

Michelle (39:42)
Well, thank you so much for having this conversation with us. This has been so wonderful. 

Kelly (39:48)
We’re so grateful.

Hāweatea (39:50)
So fun, I knew I was gonna have fun today. Yeah.

Michelle (39:56)
Alright, well, Ritual Fam, if you are part of the Patreon, can stick around for some more extended conversation with Hawaea. Otherwise, we hope that you have magical time. Goodbye!

Kelly (40:11)
Bye everyone.

Michelle (40:13)
All right, Ritual Fam, we hope that you enjoyed today's episode with Hawaea. We know that we just love talking to her and I'll be honest with you, I don't always listen to the bonus content, but today I just wanted to keep listening because I love hearing Hawaea speak and she's just so calming and inspirational.

So if you want to hear that extended conversation, you can find it on the Patreon. We're doing something a little bit different there trying a new system out. So there will be the full episode plus the bonus content if you are a Patreon member. But then if you just want to buy the bonus content, it will now be separate from the full episode. So hopefully that format feels accessible to people but we would love to see you over there. Your support is so meaningful to us. It really helps us to continue this podcast and be independent in our creativity and get to choose our topics and who we want on the podcast and continue to have these really amazing conversations. So whether you are getting one episode or subscribing or just want to say hi to us over there and don't want to subscribe it’s all really helpful and meaningful to us. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, have a magical time. Goodbye.