When we are massaging and healing in Lomi Lomi we use Oli – Hawaiian chants or prayers.
We may be calling upon our spirit guides, angels and ancestors to share wisdom with us and to guide us on our healing journey.
Hawaiian prayers are powerful and I like to use them at the start of a Lomi Lomi (kahuna) massage and also sometimes during a massage and at the end of the Lomi Lomi.
There is no real right on wrong on this, it is entirely up to to the individual. In some cases I have given a full 90 minutes massage and done a silent prayer and no chanting and other times i felt the urge to chant out loud during the massage. I believe we are guided on this when we need it and its best to go with your flow.
It helps you connect, to relax and to guide you.
In ancient Hawaiian times prayers / Pule were used for many ceremonies and even today we use them to open the mind and allow spirit to help and guide us.
These are some of our Hawaiian chants or prayer we use in Nalu Massage Training.
Early Hawaiian music was in the form of chants. A chant is a type of song in which several words or syllables are sung in one tone. There were two basic chant forms, oli and mele hula. Oli were performed by a single person unaccompanied by any instruments. Oli were not composed for dancing. They were sacred prayers and genealogies of the spirits and aliʻi.
The other form was mele hula, or hula chant. Mele hula were poems and songs composed for dancing. They had definite rhythms to lead the dancer and were often accompanied by instruments.
Chants were composed for many reasons. Some were chants of birth, death, genealogy, love, naming, praise, prophecy or war. A chant composed for a particular person became the property of that person.
In our western ways of today many of the beliefs have some how got lost a long the way but i
Here is a link to E H0 Mai, one of my favorites and thanks to Aunty Edith Kanaka’ole for having written this chant and also for Kumu John Keolamaka’ainana Lake for chanting it initially.
