Understanding your mind and heart allows you to experience life to the fullest.
Understanding your mind and heart allows you to experience life to the fullest.
As a StudyAuckland Student Ambassador, I helped organise a Mental Health/Well-being event just the past week at UoA & AUT. I had an incredible time learning more about how my mental health works. Thanks to Clinical Psychologist Yolanda Valdez for an incredible presentation on this topic, especially when she unpacked the Te Whare Tapa Whā Model.
Te Whare Tapa Whā is a Maori model of mental health that takes a holistic approach to well-being. It is based on the idea that there are four key dimensions of health that must be in balance in order for a person to achieve optimal well-being. These four dimensions are taha tinana (physical health), taha wairua (spiritual health), taha hinengaro (mental health), and taha whanau (family health).
I would like to share a bit of my journey moving to New Zealand and how I was able to apply these principles to improved significantly my mental health.
As an Asia lady, we rarely talk about mental health and well-being at home. You just study, eat, play, and you get a job, that’s it! You toughen up when things get hard, and never really address the deeper roots of distress in your soul. That’s all I knew about life.
I remember a season in my life when I was a stressed student, applying for visas and trying to find work to survive, it was incredibly challenging. I also had poor physical health and I did not realise how it did affect my mood.
Thinking back that season was rough, especially for the fact that I was away from my parents.
Living abroad for 11 years, I have discovered that community is powerful. Being plugged into a place where you know and are known, where you love and are loved by others. I have learned that to improve mental health using Te Whare Tapa Wha, it is important to address all four dimensions of health. This means taking care of your physical health through exercise and proper nutrition, nurturing your spiritual health through practices such as meditation, prayer, and connecting with a higher purpose, maintaining strong relationships with your family and community, and taking steps to develop a healthy resilient mindset that will become the foundation of your life.
When applying these principles, you also discover that there is HOPE beyond our stressful seasons, there is CHANGE beyond the struggle, and there are friendships beyond the difficult seasons. I am just so glad that I am part of a community that has helped me both understand and put into practice Te Whare Tapa Whā.
Taha tinana (physical health): Thankfully I have been able to develop my workout routine, as well as my nutrition. It’s incredible how my mood has changed over the years as I focused on building an exercise routine. You don’t need a gym membership for that by the way.
Taha wairua (spiritual health): Though I am aware that not everyone here considers themselves spiritual, I want to share that I do have a faith in God, and that faith has sustained me in my tough times. We all have different ways that we connect with the ‘Divine’, for me I set time aside to meditate and pray every day. It has reduced drastically my anxiety and stress. For me spirituality is about connecting with ‘something’ or ‘someone’ higher than you, resulting in having a higher purpose in life.
Taha whanau (family health): This was one of the most challenging ones for me because my family is far away.
The solution I have to be able to develop a whanau (family) outside of my biological family was to get involved in a different community, at the moment as a student ambassador I get to plan some incredible events with the INTL HUB community. They have become my family in New Zealand for the past 5 years. I highly recommend anyone to get involved in communities within your local areas. It’s really rewarding and they will become your whanau.
Taha hinengaro (mental health): I used to have a really negative outlook on life. Often I was caught on a bad mood which was caused by having wrong patterns of thinking. I didn’t have a healthy way of thinking and processing things. Nevertheless, throughout my time as an immigrant in New Zealand, I realised that if I wanted to improve then I had to change - to make a conscious decision to improve. It’s not just about thinking positively about things, it’s about processing things well, both good and bad things, in your mind.
In summary, Te Whare Tapa Wha is a holistic model of mental health that emphasizes the importance of balancing physical, spiritual, mental, and family health. By taking care of all four dimensions of health, you can improve your overall well-being and better manage stress during challenging times. I highly recommend you to study this model, and apply this model to your life. I changed a lot and I think that if you apply it, your life will also change for the better. Let’s live life to the fullest together!