Ho’oponopono: what it is, how it works, benefits and more!

Vanice Toassa
4 min readDec 3, 2019

By Zen App

Having a moment of peace to reflect on one’s feelings within an increasingly busy routine does not always require a quiet place, a few minutes off, or total disconnection from the outside world.
Amazing as this idea may seem, there is a technique for making your daily life less stressful through mental and spiritual cleansing without the need for religious teachings or yoga postures. Her name is ho’oponopono.
In this post, you will better understand what this very different word means and find out how it is able to provide more lightness to your life! Are you curious? So come on!.

What is ho’oponopono
The word “ho’o” means “cause” in Hawaiian, while “ponopono” means “perfection”. The term “ho’oponopono” can be translated as “correct a mistake” or “make it right”.
It is a practice that does not require much teaching, but it is powerful for purifying one’s body and getting rid of bad memories or feelings that hold the mind in a negative tune.
The term became known from an experience lived by the therapist and teacher, Ihaleakala Hew Len. As unbelievable as the story may seem, this man has managed to cure an entire pavilion of mentally ill criminals in Hawaii without even talking or interacting with any of them.
By analyzing each patient’s records, the therapist applied the ho’oponopono keywords, and the repetition of the technique changed his mood. Consequently, the mental activity of the detainees also changed.
The results were so surprising that, in short, it can be said that Len was able to heal the prisoners as he was healing himself.

How the technique works
The technique assumes that everything we know as “reality” is experienced individually by our mind. What you feel, hear, see and even the things or people you know are influenced by your inner self.
As such, everything around you involves your participation, as you are responsible for what you think and feel. Have you noticed that we ourselves can often be our worst enemies? This is because each thought can activate a mechanism that recreates a (albeit illusory) world of problems.
The main purpose of ho’oponopono is to seek the…