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ĀteaOctober 20, 2017

The wairua goes out for a wander: why sleep matters, and how to improve yours

Contributing writer
sleep

Health campaigner Te Miri Rangi looks at what we can learn from our ancestors about the ancient art of a good night’s rest.

When it comes to adopting a healthy lifestyle, the first two things that we turn to are eating healthy kai and exercising more often. But there are a number of pillars that form the foundation of our wellbeing as Māori. In particular, there is an established behaviour that is a fundamental characteristic of life on Earth, which we spend a third of our life doing, yet is often the last thing we consider to change in order to improve our health, and that is sleep.

When it comes to sleep, the traditional world that our tūpuna lived in supported an environment that enabled positive sleeping behaviours to occur. For example, the working day was governed by the rising and setting of the sun which helped to regulate circadian rhythm. Our tūpuna also established certain tikanga or practices that supported the natural cues in nature to enhance our beliefs around sleep.

Traditionally, it was believed that when an individual was sleeping, their wairua or spirit would leave the body and wander about. The things that their wairua did while they slept constituted the dreams they were having. Because of this belief, our tūpuna would rarely shake the body or call out loudly to someone sleeping. Our tūpuna believed that the wairua needed to be encouraged back to its tinana, or body, slowly before waking someone from their sleep. If a person is rudely woken in such a way, the wairua hurries back to the body causing a feeling of shock in the individual upon waking. This is called an ‘oho mauri’ or the startling of the mauri or essence of a person.

To look back at our kōrero whakapapa or historical narratives, we even have accounts of various atua sleeping. The first female being, Hine-ahu-one, was known to have cast a spell over Tāne and her children to cause them to remain sleeping so that she could flee to Rarohenga or the underworld. Then there is the story of Māui who in his search for immortality attempted to kill Hine-nui-te-pō while she slept. These narratives tell us that even atua engaged in sleeping behaviours. The earliest account I could find draws on the fact that it is Tāne who is responsible for putting Te Whānau Marama, the children of light, the sun, the moon and the stars in the sky and along their path. This created the day night cycle that influences not only our human sleep-wake cycles, but is fundamental to the rhythmic cycle of nature.

One of the largest challenges to our sleep is the disconnection between our social construct of time and our natural one. Technology has been great in so many ways but it has enabled our working lives to continue, in some parts of the world, for 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Our tinana is designed to detect the smallest amount of light to help regulate our biological functions. Even when our eyes are closed the light receptors in our skin and even in our ears can detect light. We are so sensitive that even the little LED light on your phone or TV can impact the quality of your sleep! We now have the power to ignore the day-night cycle that Tāne created and that our natural biology understands. This has detrimental effects on our health and wellbeing.

Just like eating or exercising, the quality and quantity of sleep that you get each night is an important part of a healthy lifestyle. When we are awake, our brain is constantly receiving and sorting loads of information from what we hear, see, smell, taste and feel. And when we go to sleep, we give our brain a little time out from our daily chaos to rest and recuperate for the next day.

Most of us know what it is like when we don’t get enough sleep. We are less alert, we feel drowsy and irritable, but we now understand that limited sleep can also significantly slow our reaction time, affect coordination and awareness, and impact our creativity and problem solving skills. For this reason, some of the top sports teams and business magnates in the world now utilise sleep specialists to tap in to the benefits of good quality sleep for improving performance.

A good night sleep can help improve memory, recuperate brain function, regulate emotions, repair damaged tissue; support growth, strengthen the immune system, and even help regulate appetite and metabolism. It can be challenging to see the benefits of getting enough good quality sleep, and I think that is why we don’t value sleep as an aspect of wellbeing in our lives. But we surely know what it is like when we don’t get enough!

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With the understanding that our tinana was formed in the context of a natural world, paying a bit of attention to the tikanga and behaviors of our tūpuna might help support positive sleep behaviours. When Tāne created Hine-ahu-one under the day-night cycle of Te Whānau Marama, we formed a relationship with the natural world. Reducing our exposure to TV screens, mobile devices and artificial light in the evening will strengthen that connection and improve the quality of our sleep. Also, understanding that our brain takes time out, and that our wairua travels from our body while we sleep, means that we should consider how we wake up in the morning. Maybe a simple change to the sound of our alarm clock is all that is needed to set us up for a more productive day.

Eating well and exercising are two important parts of living a healthy lifestyle, but when we spend a good proportion of our lives sleeping, why not make sure that it strengthens our tinana, hinengaro, and wairua.

Te Miri Rangi (Tūwharetoa, Te Arawa) is a health promoter and the founder of Whakapapa Fridays, a blog dedicated to sharing Māori perspectives on health and wellbeing.

Keep going!
The Māori Language Petition of more than 30,000 signatures calling for the teaching of te reo in schools is brought to Parliament, 1972.
The Māori Language Petition of more than 30,000 signatures calling for the teaching of te reo in schools is brought to Parliament, 1972.

ĀteaOctober 18, 2017

Why learning te reo Māori doesn’t have to be a political act

Contributing writer
The Māori Language Petition of more than 30,000 signatures calling for the teaching of te reo in schools is brought to Parliament, 1972.
The Māori Language Petition of more than 30,000 signatures calling for the teaching of te reo in schools is brought to Parliament, 1972.

Graham Cameron proposes reasons for learning a language that have nothing to do with business.

Ni hao! It’s Chinese Language Week. There has been some attempt in our local media to wrap their lips around the unfamiliar sounds of Mandarin, a few pieces about the local Chinese community, but mostly pieces about the importance of business with China promoting the idea that learning Mandarin makes economic sense.

New Zealand’s monolingualism means most New Zealanders often only conceive of languages as having value as an economic asset, rather than a cultural asset. If you’ve learned te reo Māori, you know the drill: “What’s the point in learning that language?”

“Can it get you a job?”

“It’s not even any use overseas.”

It was a trip to France that gave me pause to reflect on the poverty of that view and posit an alternative that is relevant this week: perhaps we should learn Mandarin because it is an insight into one of the great and enduring cultures and empires of our world?

Before my wife and I left for France last year, I spent the start of the year doing French classes here in Tauranga Moana to revitalise what remained of the language from my school years – some grammar, some basic sentence structures and an accent largely borrowed from Peter Sellers.

Surprisingly, those basics, the wonderful classes here and the confidence of having already learned a second language meant that most of my functional interactions in France were conducted in French. The effort was welcomed and we were treated warmly our entire trip. My epiphany came at a dinner party at our friend David’s house in Paris. Among nine guests, five languages were spoken: Portuguese, Spanish, French, English and Māori. At different points in the evening, it was not strange to find myself in a three-way conversation with someone who spoke neither English nor French, where I spoke neither Spanish nor Portugese, but our interpreter spoke all of the languages except Māori.

The Māori Language Petition of more than 30,000 signatures calling for the teaching of te reo in schools is brought to Parliament, 1972

My realisation was threefold: firstly, that this multilingualism is normal. Our monolingualism is the outlier. When we are monolingual, the tendency is to engage in the world community with an assumption that people should be able to speak English, that English is a superior language of interaction and that English has sufficient terms to explain everything that we might encounter in the world. Actually Mandarin and Spanish are languages spoken by the most people. The most popular language of trade is Spanish. There are terms in every language that cannot be expressed in English.

Secondly, that many people speak a few languages because they love to explore other cultures – not necessarily as a revolutionary act. I realised that the consequence of 130 years of active suppression of the Māori language is that all of us in Aotearoa New Zealand understand to some extent that learning te reo Māori is a political act; we may feel threatened by te reo or embrace te reo, but none of us are neutral on the subject. Don’t mistake me here: there’s plenty of politics in learning and using other languages throughout the world, but my revelation was that it is not always the case. Sometimes people learn languages just because they are beautiful and interesting.

Which led me to the conclusion: we can’t save te reo Māori if the primary reason we learn and teach it is the fight to save it or as a revolt against the Crown. There aren’t enough revolutionaries in Māori communities let alone New Zealand to do that. As much as can be achieved, we need to ensure we don’t unnecessarily burden te reo Māori with the challenges of our race relations. There is a place for encouraging people, even our tamariki Māori to learn te reo Māori just because it is beautiful and unique and learning a second language means you can more fully be a world citizen.

I’d happily have every child in Aotearoa New Zealand schools learn Mandarin alongside te reo Māori as core subjects in our curriculum. It’s good for their brain health, it’s good for their tolerance of other cultures. Learning a new language helps you have the skills to learn other languages and we are geographically an Asia Pacific country. But if the primary motivation in our community and in our government would be to make our children better widgets in the business relationship with China? Kāhore, pōuri atu!

Ātea