Ki Waho, Ki Roto

This is the start of an exercise in balancing that I was shown when I studied Te Reo a decade ago. It came to mind this morning as I sat with my cuppa on the verandah, contemplating the day. In the understanding that it’s important for people to know the problem before trying to affect a cure, I have written a great deal lately about the issues underpinning the way the world has gone down and its effects on us all.

It’s time now to look at the ways we can, as individuals, look for balance in our lives. Knowing as we now do, that the masculine has overreached, we have to look at the ways this has affected us personally, to begin to turn it around. This is not so that the other major gender can start taking all the goodies, but so that we can all make our lives healthier energetically, psychologically, physically, and culturally. Just as out-of-balanced gears on a car crunch against each other, causing the inability for the car to move well or at all, there is a similar effect on our own outer lives that our inner imbalance has caused. Bringing our attention to our own imbalance way of life if more than about work/life adjustments. It requires a deep dive into the ways we have been brought up to enable us to address these structure where we find them in ourselves.

So firstly, we know that we all have Yin and Yang energies within. Though males have been trained to eschew their feminine tendencies, and likewise for women their masculine, they are there for a purpose that has little or nothing to do with actual sex. Everything in this material world must continually find stability within opposites. We cannot attempt to remove one whole aspect of us without serious consequences. Life needs to be a dance not a battle. It requires us at this juncture to become courageous, digging into our consciousness to find those psychologically crunching gears.

The trick here is to follow our bias. Wherever we find it, there will be a resistance to the opposite and indeed a fear of its presence. Of course, we are scared of stepping out of line with our prevailing culture, but as that culture is largely the problem, we need to challenge it inside of us. For instance, we all need quiet time alone. If we believe there is something wrong with us for not wanting to be around other people, we may well force ourselves to go out when what was more appropriate was to allow that need to be met until the opposite is ready for us to choose it instead. Then we go out.  This is a simple rebalancing. Talking to a neighbour recently, they were concerned that they didn’t want to see people sometimes and felt that was a problem, until I pointed out that I also need a good amount of time alone to balance out the amount of time I spend talking to people in my practice.  Recognising these balance issues are part of taking responsibility for our lives.

The outward pointing abilities we are given are from the element of the yang/masculine with us. To keep doing is what we have been encouraged to believe is the right way to live. But without the contemplative Yin/female there becomes nothing worthwhile doing. Life becomes repetitive, and more like machines than people. Stepping back into the Yin, allowing the Universal creativity to flow through being rather than continual doing, re-energises us, refreshing the possibility for later doings.

This applies to both men and women. Being sensitive to your inner world of feeling and taking time within doesn’t make a man effeminate. That word itself is a putdown in our society. Likewise, being a woman that is outwardly orientated, enjoying physical activities and building things is not an indication that there is something wrong with her.

The world is in dire need of contemplative people that are willing to allow different solutions and ideas to upend the unbalanced ways we have been living for millennia. But that can only happen if we do the challenging work of rebalancing our own attitudes. If you are an extreme anything, question it. What would it look like to bring its opposite into balance in your life? We don’t want to ditch patriarchy and go back to matriarchy. What we want is a new archy. I have heard it referred to as archyarchy. I like the word omniarchy. Either way, the road to a balanced dance with each other is already in the consciousness of some humans. We just need it to spread to the point that culture finds its middle ground.

In the course of doing this, you might come across some trauma that you have experienced at the hands of a fixed, and ferocious Society, that has made you feel bad about yourself. Hear me when I say that there is nothing wrong with you. Just because you fell foul of a rigid system does not mean that’s your fault.  That which is too ridged will break, as it is. But your job is to find out who you are in a world flexible enough to hold us all.

That said, it brings me to the exercise I started with. And to any Māori readers forgive me for the liberty I take in my approximation. Ki waho means outwards, and ki roto means inwards. This exercise is an honouring of the fact that we have duality: inside, outside, up and down, left and right, masculine and feminine or feminine and masculine (;. Standing with our feet apart, facing forward, we swing our arms backwards one at a time, while intoning those words three times. This begins it.  Then we continue, by swinging our left arm backwards honouring our Wahine side, then our right Tane side. Lifting our arms up to the sky we honour Ranganui (Sky) and, downwards to honour Papatuanuku (Earth). Then, standing straight again, we bring the arms into our chest to honour the union of these two within us, saying something like “May they fill me” then (pushing the arms together out towards the front), we say ‘That I may take it out into the world and do my part”. This is repeated turning in the direction of each of the four directions, then back to the front, where you finish with three more final Ki Roto Ki Waho’s. Of course, this is all done in Te Reo for which I cannot remember the exact words. But the principle is that in doing this exercise we are bringing our attention to the balanced dance between all our essential energies. Try doing it every morning on arising, to begin the day in the way that you intend to continue.

In the coming into balance in the world, we have to be prepared to give up certain ways of being for the new to be allowed to inform our lives into the future. As always, what we don’t do through choice is imposed upon us through crisis. There is still time to change the road we’re on (with appreciation to Led Zeplin for those words.) Bless.