What Is Ho’oponopono Really?
September 4 , 2025
Article highlights:
- Ho’oponopono defined
- 7 principles of ho’oponopono
- A healing pono prayer
I first visited Hawai‘i on a 30-day solo pilgrimage to mark my 30th birthday. I traveled across the various islands, and one day on a beautiful, somewhat remote beach on Maui, I met a Hawaiian elder and her grown nephew. She was instructing him in Hawaiian ways, and as we visited, she welcomed me into their conversation about healing.
That afternoon, she — “Auntie,” as she asked me to call her — spoke with us in depth about our conflicts with family members, leading us each toward honest self-assessment and the releasing of painful memories so we wouldn’t carry those heavy burdens anymore. Then she gave both her nephew and me a healing blessing. She chanted in Hawaiian and sprinkled us with ocean water from a frond she dipped in the waves.
I felt an overwhelming rush of loving energy stream into my heart, my whole body warming, tears welling in my eyes. Then Auntie walked quietly down the beach, leaving us to sit in silence, letting the prayer “be with us.” Before we parted, she placed a flower from her hair and a shell into my hands. I have treasured the little shell these many years.
That was my first introduction to ho‘oponopono, a series of teachings and practices for “setting things right” in yourself and with others. The word seemed mysterious then, yet it spoke to me deeply. Looking back, I realize how privileged I was to be included in what was one small part of a tradition of restoration for living in balance, one that has been preserved within Hawaiian tradition since ancient times.
Over the years, through conversations with elders and kahunas during extended stays in Hawai‘i, I have sought to better understand this wisdom of reconciliation — how we heal rifts, restore relationships, and return to wholeness. What I’ve learned so far is what I wish to share in part here.
Let me be clear: I am not a ho’oponopono kumu (teacher). I have not been formally trained, nor do I have the depth of knowledge about it that exists in the culture. What I offer is only what I have gleaned in hopes of gaining some benefit while honoring this tradition and not adding to the misunderstandings that surround it.
So — what is ho‘oponopono?
It is not, in fact, the forgiveness practice popularized in the West — the version that repeats the four phrases: “I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.“ While this has offered benefit to many, it is not ho‘oponopono. It can certainly be used effectively but should not be called ho‘oponopono. It is a forgiveness practice.
Forgiveness may be a part of the teaching, but it is not its focus. The true purpose of ho‘oponopono is always reconciliation. It seeks to achieve the peaceful resolution of conflict, and the restoration of balance between people. Traditionally, a trained kumu (master teacher) leads the process, guiding participants through specific teachings, prayers, and rituals that help uncover truth and restore harmony.
The word ho‘oponopono roughly translates as “to make right” or “to return to balance.” The process allows participants to release burdens — called pōhaku, or stones — so healing can occur. Central to the practice are self-honesty, humility, and other such values deeply rooted in Hawaiian culture. Historically, it has always been communal, between willing family or community members. It leads to learning to live together in better ways.
At its heart is the root word pono. Pono can be defined as goodness or harmony but it is more than this. Pono is a way of life. One learns to live pono. Living pono is a commitment to act with integrity, fairness, and respect, even when no one is watching. To “live pono” is to choose what is just and beneficial for both the individual and community.
Children in earlier times were taught these principles from birth — how to live in balance, how to restore harmony when things went awry, how to walk in the world with integrity. Imagine being raised in such a culture. What a gift of wisdom it would be to be immersed in this from the start.
Ho‘oponopono is often described as “setting one’s house in order” so that harmony can be restored. Through it, each person learns deep self-honesty, humility in conflict, and awareness of how one’s actions affect others. Ultimately, each participant agrees that, whatever has gone before, they will take full responsibility for preserving relationships going forward — by living pono.
To me, ho‘oponopono is also about restoring and supporting the frequency of reconciliation in our lives and world; even the word carries that frequency.
My goodness, how we need this just now, right? To help us integrate the frequency of reconciliation in our own lives and world, I’ve pulled together the ho‘oponopono principles I’ve gleaned so far as being important to becoming reconciled with others.
Keep in mind these are not the only core principles of ho‘oponopono, only the ones I have learned over time. Ho‘oponopono itself is a layering of teachings, rituals, and ceremonies specific to Hawaiian culture.
Core Principles
- Reconciliation — the true aim of ho‘oponopono is not forgiveness alone but the restoration of harmony and right relationship.
- Release of Burdens (pōhaku) — letting go of what weighs down the heart, so healing can move freely.
- Truthful Self-Assessment — becoming deeply self-honest, humble, and aware of one’s actions and their impact on others.
- Taking Responsibility — each person choosing to carry responsibility for maintaining relationships going forward.
- Living Pono — embodying integrity, fairness, and balance as a way of life, not just a momentary practice.
- Communal Healing — recognizing that this healing is not solitary; it is about restoring the health of relationships in families and communities.
- Sacred Guidance — honoring the role of elders, prayers, and ceremony in helping people move toward wholeness.
A Prayerful Affirmation in the Spirit of Ho‘oponopono
Here is a short prayer-like affirmation drawn from the principles above. It can be spoken inwardly, or aloud, as a way of aligning with the heart of ho‘oponopono:
A Prayer of Reconciliation
May I forgive and release the burdens I carry.
May I let go of all that weighs my heart down.
May I feel reconciled with those I have hurt or who have hurt me.
May I see myself truthfully, but with compassion and humility.
May I, going forward, take total responsibility for my actions and their effects on my life and others.
May the ancestors and wisdom-carriers guide me and light my way.
May I live “pono” — with honesty, integrity, balance, and care for others.
May harmony be restored within me, among us, and between us.
Perhaps there is nothing more important to support in our lives, and in our country, right now than the frequency of reconciliation, right?
May we take inspiration from this teaching. May we seek in our own hearts how the spirit of ho‘oponopono might guide us toward greater balance and reconciliation in our own relationships. That is my prayer.
I’m sending you love today,
Mayet Leilani
CREDIT — The wonderful photo is by Robert Frutos and is of Kalei I‘iliahu, who was a dear friend to us both. May the ancestors bless you on your journey in spirit, dear one.
What Do Your Values and Your Imagination have in Common?
August 28, 2025
What do you value most? I have asked this question of people around the world — people of many different races, ages, religions, and politics. The answers are the same. Throughout the world the similarity of the things we value is one of our strongest commonalities.
Time and again, people from all cultures listed the following among the things they value most: peace, freedom, family, friends, love, environment, quality of life, spiritual beliefs, financial sufficiency, service to others, fulfilling work, education, beauty, kindness, goodness, authenticity, honesty, wisdom, hope.
These are what we value, and yet our worlds can seem so different, often lacking enough of what we value most. Why?
Naturally it follows that we would do well to ask which values we are living. Are we, perhaps, living our ego values by bickering and gossiping? Is intense judgment of ourselves and others the value we express most? If we value family most or friends, or our spiritual life, but have no time for them, what are we really valuing?
In truth, what we are living out is what we are valuing most. And what we value most is what we begin to actually imagine into the world. The relationship between what I value and what I imagine has always interested me.
Going back to the common values we share around the world:
Imagine your personal boundaries expressing your better values — what would that look like?
Imagine yourself living your higher political values. That’s novel to explore!
Imagine your daily mundane being more expressive of your higher values. What would that be for you? Would you wake differently? Care for your home differently? Interest yourself in different things in your random thoughts?
What are you valuing into being?
We can actually do this to an amazing degree, can’t we, this imagining? I think we are discovering this now and as a result our own lives are changing, beginning to reflect more of our better values. This feels great to us.
Many, many people are doing this now — imagining and reimagining such things into existence. No matter what the nay-sayers would like to spread abroad, it is happening. And it does have far-reaching results.
Think of the ordinary people you know who live more elevated values. We each have friends, coworkers, schoolteachers, neighbors, church leaders and acquaintances who are living higher values — they are living more of their innate goodness. Look for them, they are there. They are not doing it perfectly but they are many parts of their lives better.
In many cases our work, friendships, families etc. are beginning to change; our lives and our world are transforming. As the singer, John Lennon, so beautifully suggested long ago we are now imagining the world better.
What things of greater value are you imagining into being?
May the world begin to reflect what we truly hold most dear. This is my prayer and my aim for our world. It is in this that our hearts are truly joined, I know, and I love you each for this camaraderie we share.
Thanks a thousand thanks for this wonderful dance together and enjoy the coming days as you turn ever more joyously to your determination to imagine your most essential Self into being.
Hugs,
Mayet Leilani
A Message From the Heart of Love: Strength, Majesty and Sovereignty
August 21, 2025
One of those funny things happened that often does for us here. I sat down to get a Heart of Love Message for us today and kept getting interrupted. Each time I came back to the computer to continue, it would open to someone else’s session I did a couple of weeks ago.
After it happened three times, I finally wised up and read through the other person’s session—and realized part of it was for us today! Hers was many pages long, but the following section is for us right now.
As backstory: this client’s session was actually about a legal problem she was having in the family, but at the end, she mentioned that her guru (a Buddhist monk) had just given her the spiritual name Mountain/Strength. She confessed to being a little disappointed in the name because it lacked poetry and femininity to her.
Well. When she said that—WHOSH—in came the spirit of the Great Mountains and gave a beautiful message about Strength, Majesty, and Sovereignty. Following is the part for you to take as your own reading today, with “Spirit” speaking as the voice of the Sacred Mountains.
Enjoy!
XO Mayet
A Message From the Heart of Love
Strength, Majesty and Sovereignty
We mountains are generally associated among humankind with strength of body and bearing, and with majesty and sovereignty. Strength, and majesty, and sovereignty. And we say yes—this is profoundly so.
But what is this strength? And what is the majesty, and what is the sovereignty that we, as mountains, bear witness to as regards all life in form? And especially—what is this for you?
Your strength and strengthening physically, yes. But what is your real strength? Your true strength is found in your majesty. The same majesty that mountains carry, and that poets have sung regarding us through all of time. And what is this majesty of ours, that is yours as well? It is the extraordinary magnificence of the God-Light of Source within your being.
That is majesty. That is what you come unto in this, your journey. That is your true strength—the awareness of this truth of who you are: a life-filled, holy light walking and experiencing a wondrous life in material form.
The true strength for all that meets you in your life is the knowledge and expression of this Magnificence that you, in fact, carry.
Using the mountains, you can call upon your magnificence as you labor upward. Our strength is not gained from without, but instead by sourcing the Presence we carry—that is within you.
This contains the vitality, the strength of muscle and sinew, the life resolve and energy. But as well as that strength, there is also the strength of your majesty—the majesty of your true magnificence, that the beings in the inner worlds always say you carry.
“You are so magnificent,” it is said. That magnificence is strength, and that strength is power. It is power. Power beyond limit and recognition. And whether Mohammed comes unto the mountain, or the mountain unto Mohammed—it is to this power it refers.
And you come now in your life, beloved, to the time intended… the time to become so greatly conscious of this, and more integrated with it, more wielding of this power.
You come to the time to move beyond your fear of it—a fear deeply embedded in humanity—and dare to claim it. To take it up, in humility and responsibility, for strengthening your life and the world around you by accepting the power you are.
And to offer this resident power back unto your mother Gaia in her own transition. To offer your expression of majesty into her own greater majesty, and into the greater magnificence of her being.
We the mountains are sovereign—and what is this? To be Sovereign is to know, witness, and express the truth of your birthright: as a life in form that sparks with the divine, consciously radiating in the physical.
So now you understand the gift transferred. The gift deepened into in this journey. The gift now to be called up and further integrated into your makeup, dearest:
May your true strength come forth from the majesty of the innate magnificence you truly are, to spark the power and sovereignty of your Source Being within you.
We, your sacred mountains, are here at all times in service to the Earth, standing unmoved through time and beyond time, even unto the smallest of life, including you, sweet human.
~*~*~*~
** What is the source of these Heart of Love messages?
I call this content “inspired wisdom.” The connection I make is with what I call my expanded self. This places me in more direct contact with a greater body of wisdom. In this, I feel aware of our culture at large as well as what might be called the greater wisdom within other levels of awareness—such as what some cultures call the Ancestors, guides or angels, Higher Self, God, and higher consciousness. I think of it as the Fullness, but I leave the choice to you.
We each have access to far more than we might have come to believe. Shamans, mystics, wisdom carriers, and spiritual leaders have long known this—our heart and subtle energetic systems are created to connect with this Fullness.
It makes me smile to feel the connectedness of all things in this way, and more and more, that is the sense I walk in through my day. I share this information about the source of these messages because I know that more and more, this is how you walk through your day as well.