Ho'oponopono

Family reconciliation before and after 1819

Malcolm Nāea Chun, a cultural specialist at the University of Hawaiʻi Curriculum Research and Development Group, begins his account with the historian Samuel Manaiakalani Kamakau. Kamakau described families in pre-contact Hawaiʻi who, when trouble was attributed to a wrong against a family ʻaumakua (ancestral god), made offerings of atonement and reconciliation at a refuge place called Pōhaku o Kāne. Chun adds that when the high chiefs ended the state religious system in 1819, such places gradually fell out of use and other forms of seeking reconciliation developed.

Chun presents the modern practice as a descendant of those earlier forms rather than an unchanged survival. The sources reviewed for this page do not give a continuous documented history between 1819 and the twentieth century, and Chun's sample pages do not claim one.

Mary Kawena Pukui and the Queen Liliʻuokalani Children's Center

Chun reports that Mary Kawena Pukui, a translator and consultant at the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, told museum interviewers in 1958 that the practice had become a fond memory since her mother's death in 1942, and that most people regarded it as a remnant of heathenism. From the mid 1960s to the early 1970s she worked with mental health professionals and social workers at the Queen Liliʻuokalani Children's Center to describe it in terms that modern professionals and families could learn. The resulting books are the Nānā I Ke Kumu series, whose second volume (1972, Pukui, Haertig and Lee) is the standard reference.

Lynette and Richard Paglinawan, Native Hawaiian social workers, describe the committee's purpose as rediscovering Hawaiian mental health practices of earlier generations. They write that knowledge of the practice was limited and fragmented and that there were not enough practitioners, so training the next generation was an ongoing task.

Self I-Dentity Through Hoʻoponopono

A separate lineage begins with Morrnah Nalamaku Simeona (1913-1992). A doctoral dissertation by a teacher of her method states that she taught the process to many people in Hawaiʻi and abroad and was named a Living Treasure by Hawaiʻi's governor and legislature. The organization that holds her trademarked method, IZI LLC, calls her a Hawaiian kahuna lapaʻau (traditional healer), describes the method as an updated Hawaiian problem-solving process, and says Ihaleakala Hew Len met her in 1982 and took her Basic I class.

In the same dissertation, the method is described as done entirely in the mind of one person, in contrast to a face-to-face family process. The author attributes to the Hawaiian cultural figure George Naope the statement that ho'oponopono was conducted in three ways before Western contact: face to face with a facilitator, first in the mind and then in conversation, and wholly in the mind. This is one practitioner's account passed on in a personal communication, and the sources reviewed here do not document it independently.

Meaning of the word

The Hawaiian dictionary sense of pono, as Manulani Aluli Meyer lists it, covers goodness, uprightness, correct procedure and being in good order, and the compound is commonly translated as setting to right or making right. Meyer, a University of Hawaiʻi scholar who writes as a student of Pukui's students, holds that the practice is first a set of principles and only secondarily a facilitation technique. Chun describes it as a cultural practice of restoring goodness to what it once was.

Vocabulary of the family process

Meyer's glossary, which she attributes to Pukui, includes ʻohana (family), haku (a facilitator respected by all), pule wehe (opening prayer, addressed to the family ʻaumakua), kukulu kumuhana (pooling of strength toward a positive goal, also the clear statement of the problem), hihia (entanglement of emotions), mahiki (peeling back layers of the matter, described as unpeeling an onion), ʻoiaʻiʻo (essence of truth), mihi (confession and apology), kala (release) and pule hoʻopau (closing prayer). Meyer notes that the vocabulary is understood and practiced differently across families, islands, districts and individual haku.

One term, several practices

The word is now applied to at least three things in the sources: the facilitated family process documented by Pukui, the self-directed method taught under the registered name Self I-Dentity Through Hoʻoponopono (SITH), and a short repeated-phrase form in consumer wellness writing. A consumer magazine article credits Hew Len with bringing the modern form to wide notice and repeats his claim, which this page has not verified, that he helped an entire hospital ward. That article does not distinguish the repeated-phrase form from the Hawaiian family process or from SITH.

The family session

Meyer describes five agreements that the family examines before a session begins: each member commits to the problem-solving process, words and deeds are shared in an atmosphere of truth, aloha is shared or the members commit to restoring it, what is said stays confidential, and the haku is accepted by all as fair and impartial. The session then moves through an opening prayer, a statement of the problem, the layered discussion of what happened, mihi and release, and a closing prayer. She writes that the haku does not call the family together; the family asks for the process.

Meyer also writes that the full practice cannot be detailed in a short article, that the process cannot be prescribed or franchised, and that Pukui wrote extensively about the Kaʻū family style of the practice. The page therefore gives an overview only and does not reproduce sacred prayers or restricted knowledge.

Use in a residential program

Andrew Grant's 2008 master's thesis observed a three-week residential substance use program for Native Hawaiian youth at Kahua Ola Hou on Molokaʻi. Sessions were scheduled in the second week, with the program director acting as haku. Each youth wrote a statement forgiving the family and asking forgiveness, and the sessions opened with a prayer by the youth. Grant reports that the haku set the rules and could stop a session that got out of hand, and that staff aimed to teach youth to use the process with relatives after leaving.

Self-directed methods

In the James dissertation, participants in the test condition followed an audio-guided exercise, adapted by the author from a description of Simeona's teaching, in which they imagine a person who has wronged them on a mental stage, offer willingness to become pono with that person, and direct imagined healing light toward both. The IZI LLC site lists SITH classes at several levels, private sessions and absentee programs, with fees that vary by class, and states that only its listed instructors may teach the trademarked method.

Family and community settings

Native Hawaiian authors and programs describe the family process as a way to restore relationships and to address problems tied to family conflict. Paglinawan and Paglinawan call it one especially useful practice for social workers serving Hawaiian clients who may not respond well to Western approaches. A 2023 news report states that the Hawaiʻi health plan AlohaCare covers hoʻoponopono for its members through a program for Native Hawaiian healing practices, with the plan describing it as a way for couples and families to resolve conflict and improve communication.

Illness and stress

A qualitative study by Lana Kaʻopua and colleagues uses hoʻoponopono as a framework: a spiritually grounded family discussion traditionally held before medicinal treatment, with family prayer, pooling of family strength, assignment of responsibility and discernment of the meaning of illness. The SITH study by Kretzer and colleagues presented the method as a step-by-step approach to identify and relieve stress. A consumer article presents the four-phrase form as a way to find peace in daily life.

Qualitative and descriptive work on the family process

Grant's thesis was a qualitative case study with 16 participants, 15 of them Hawaiian or part Hawaiian, using interviews and observation of five sessions. It identified hoʻoponopono as one of seven themes and reported participants' positive accounts, including parents and youth describing improved communication. It collected no outcome measures, and Grant lists follow-up of the youth and comparison with established family therapies as future research.

The Kaʻopua study interviewed seven people, three breast cancer survivors and four family members, from Hawaiian churches on Maui and Oʻahu in 2005. It used hoʻoponopono to frame a culturally responsive description of coping and measured no effect of the practice.

Studies of self-directed forms

Kretzer and colleagues (2007) enrolled 23 Asian, Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander adults in Hawaiʻi in a half-day SITH class alongside standard medical therapy. With no control group, blood pressure fell on average by 11.86 mm Hg systolic and 5.44 mm Hg diastolic after the class and spirituality scores rose. The authors conclude it may be an effective adjunct and call for further research. This page read the abstract only.

James (2008), an unpublished doctoral dissertation, assigned 79 online participants alternately by login order to an audio-guided exercise or to no exercise. Scores for unforgiveness toward one transgressor fell significantly in the exercise group and not in the control group, but the revenge subscale showed no difference between groups. The author discloses teaching the process since 1998. Limitations he lists include a self-selected sample, unsupervised use and uncontrolled outside factors.

What has not been shown

The sources reviewed contain no controlled study of the facilitated family process and none of the four-phrase form. Searches of the PubMed database through the available tools returned only the Kretzer record for the SITH method, but these searches were not exhaustive. No source reviewed supports claims that the practice affects external events or other people's health.

Revival and the Hawaiian sources

The Hawaiian-authored sources reviewed treat the practice as a living family and community process that survived suppression and was deliberately revived. Meyer's statement that it cannot be franchised, and the Pukui remark Chun quotes about customs turned into plastic imitations, are general statements. None of the Hawaiian-authored sources opened for this page directly addresses the SITH method or the four-phrase form, so this page does not attribute a specific critique of them to Native Hawaiian scholars.

How the forms differ

The sources do show that the forms differ in structure. The family process involves several people, a haku and shared agreements, while the SITH and four-phrase forms are described as individual practices, and SITH is a registered trademark taught by authorized instructors for a fee. Critical commentary by Hawaiian practitioners on the four-phrase form exists online, but this page found it only on pages it could not verify and does not cite it.

Reported cautions and gaps

None of the sources reviewed reports an adverse-event series or a harms review for any form of hoʻoponopono, and absence of reports is not evidence of safety. Meyer and Grant both describe emotionally intense sessions, and Grant observed participants sobbing during a session. Both describe the facilitator's authority to pause or stop. The James dissertation excluded reported physical attacks, rape, abuse and severe emotional or mental trauma, and minors, because participants worked unsupervised, and states that the setting would have been inappropriate for such transgressions.

The SITH study assessed the class alongside standard blood pressure treatment, not as a replacement for it, and the sources reviewed give no basis for substituting hoʻoponopono for medical or mental health care. The sources also do not address families where abuse or safety concerns are present. People with such concerns, or with a health condition, can raise them with a qualified clinician.

Training and cost

Paglinawan and Paglinawan write that training the next generation of practitioners is an ongoing task, and Grant's participants described the haku as certified by a kupuna (elder) in one program. No licensing standard for facilitators was found in the sources reviewed. IZI LLC states that only its authorized instructors may teach SITH and that fees vary by class.