Whenever I Think of Laka, I Think of Water
I’ve often wondered why certain places make it easier to hear ourselves.
For me, it has always been the ocean.
Whenever life feels especially full, I find myself walking along the shoreline. I don’t usually arrive with the intention of figuring something out. I simply walk. Somewhere between the sound of the waves and the rhythm of my own breathing, the conversation in my mind becomes quieter. I begin to notice things I couldn’t hear before.
It has taken me years to trust those moments.
When I was younger, I believed that understanding came from thinking. Today, I find that some of the deepest understandings in my life have arrived while I was paying attention to something entirely ordinary.
The ocean has been one of those teachers. Perhaps that is why, whenever I think of Laka, I think of water.
More than twenty years ago, I travelled to the Hawaiian island of Kauai, where I met my teacher, Laura Kealoha Yardley. She introduced me to the teachings of Lemurian Huna, although I don’t think I would have described it that way at the time.
What I remember most clearly isn’t what Laura taught. I remember how I felt in her presence. I remember leaving at the end of the day with the strange feeling that something inside me had become familiar again.
I couldn’t have explained it then. Even now, I find it difficult to put into words. People often ask me what Lemurian Huna is. I still pause before answering.
The teachings include practices, ceremonies, and ways of understanding life, but none of those descriptions seem to touch the heart of my experience.
If I had to describe it, I would probably say that Lemurian Huna helped me remember how to trust what I already knew, not what I thought. What I knew before thought arrived.
That distinction has become more meaningful to me with time.
One of the ways these teachings continue to live in me is through my relationship with Laka.
Laka is the Goddess of healing, water, restoration, and nature.
For a long time, I thought healing meant changing something about myself. There was always something to understand, something to work on, something waiting on the other side of enough effort.
Life has slowly softened that understanding.
Now, when I think about healing, I think about becoming more available to life. I think about the moments when I stop trying to hold everything together and discover that life has been holding me all along.
I think about walking beside the ocean and realizing that I no longer feel the same urgency I felt when I arrived.
Nothing outside of me has changed. Something inside of me has.
Laura used to describe Laka as playful. I remember smiling whenever she spoke about her because it challenged my own ideas about healing. I had imagined healing as something serious, almost solemn. Laura spoke about it with warmth and laughter, as though joy could also become part of the medicine. That stayed with me.
Over the years, I’ve noticed that some of my deepest moments of healing have also been the moments when I’ve laughed unexpectedly, or found beauty in a place where I hadn’t expected it.
Laka is also known as the Goddess of Hula.
I’ve never been able to watch hula without feeling that something more than movement is taking place. There is a quality of listening in the dance. The body seems to know something that words are still trying to understand.
I think that has become my relationship with Lemurian Huna.
Less a search for answers. More a practice of listening: listening to my body, to nature, listening to the quiet movements of my own heart.
I recorded a short Pule, a Hawaiian prayer to Laka:
As I was recording it, I found myself thinking about those first days in Kauai and how little I understood of what was unfolding. I’m grateful I didn’t need to understand it. Curiosity was enough.
If you choose to listen to the prayer, I hope you’ll begin there too.
Not by asking whether it is true.
Simply by noticing what happens inside you as you listen.
I’ve come to trust that our own experience is often the place where wisdom begins.
Continue the Journey
If reading about Laka stirred something within you, I'd love to invite you a little deeper into this tradition.
This fall, I'll be offering a new cohort of the Lemurian Huna Shamanic Facilitator Certification, a live virtual experience where we'll spend three days exploring the wisdom of the Four Lemurian Huna Goddesses, the HA Breath, shamanic journeying, embodied practices, and the ancient teachings that have shaped my own life for more than twenty years.
The certification isn't about learning a new spiritual system.
It's an opportunity to deepen your relationship with your own intuition, your body, nature, and the quiet wisdom that has always been there.
If you feel curious, I'd love to welcome you.
→ Join the free experiential virtual gathering on August 11th
→ Learn more about the Lemurian Huna Shamanic Facilitator Certification
