Hauora Needs to be Reintroduced at University

Illustrated by Marie Bailey

The idea of being fit and healthy has been constantly shoved down our throats since we were old enough to use the internet. While this is neither good nor bad, it’s important that as students we don’t neglect other aspects of health and wellbeing in the pursuit of short-term gratification. Hauora, the Māori paradigm that describes the foundation of well-being as a whare with four walls, needs to be reintroduced at a university level. 

You may remember hauora from your Year 9 P.E. class. That 15 minute lesson where your Pākehā teacher discussed that health is not just about being ripped, but it's fact about your mind too?! While this fever dream may only occupy a small neuron at the back of your brain, its message needs to be front of mind when envisioning what well-being truly is. 

Hauora is a concept that needs to be given more weight than it currently has in schooling.  

Sir Mason Durie’s interpretation of well-being, Te Whare Tapa Whā, helped me realise that what we should be searching for consists of four balanced sides. 

These sides are taha tinana (physical health), taha wairua (spiritual health), taha whānau (family health), and taha hinengaro (mental health). 

Now, I’m no expert on the in-depth understanding of these, but these concepts make clear sense to me. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist, nor an expert in mātauranga Māori to be confident that there’s more to health than just the physical bit. Hauora tells us exactly that. 

As students we often fail to juggle multiple focus areas at once. Whether this is a week of healthy eating or a brief stint at your local gym. In each of these cases we exert all of our time and effort into pursuing a quick feeling of well-being or accomplishment. While this is an accomplishment nonetheless, how often do we neglect other sides of health in this pursuit?  

We don’t want to sacrifice three walls of the whare to fulfil one. This is a dangerous but all too common pursuit that we - as students who are trying to navigate the world and their physical health - fall into. 

I know it can feel hard to try and improve in multiple aspects of life at once, but having hauora in mind can help encourage a more balanced approach.  

Unfortunately, this balanced approach isn’t reflected at a national level. The way we still measure and approach health in New Zealand is, by-and-large, just physical. And people are treated in our health system, by-and-large, on physical measures. 

I guess that’s the ‘Pākeha’ health model we’ve adopted, and it certainly shores up one wall of the whare. 

However, if there were links between physical and mental/spiritual/family health, and we used them effectively, imagine how much better our collective well-being would be if we considered the other three sides of the whare. 

So are there links between these? 

There always is. Firstly, you can only associate or link variables if you can measure them. As they say, if you don’t measure it, it doesn’t exist. But if you don’t think it’s important you won’t bother to measure it. There should be plenty of data relating to the ‘’side’’ of mental health, including stress, but family and spiritual health data is even harder to come by. 

If we look directly at serious medical events, many are accelerated by or heightened by mental situations related to whānau and spirituality. Acute emotional stress has, for a long time, been linked to sudden cardiovascular events such as heart attacks. Divorce, death in the family, prolonged illness, unwanted change of residence, natural catastrophe, or a highly competitive work situation, all put individuals at a greater risk of suffering from cardiovascular disease. 

This shows that our pursuit for physical fitness is not fully found within the body, but our mind plays a major part. It’s a scary reminder that health is not purely in our bodies.  

All of this should give some weight to Durie’s health model, and you could argue that the model should provide guidance as to how we, as students, define and deal with health and well-being in our society. 

To achieve true well-being it may not always be about trying to be the best in a single area of health, but instead putting smaller amounts of time and effort into resurrecting all four walls of the whare.  

If we were to start teaching this at a university level, we may be left with a cohort possessing a stronger connection to what well-being really is.