Nervous System Healing: LomiLomi, Polyvagal, and Belonging
Exploring LomiLomi’s Role in Nervous System Healing, Emotional Regulation, and Cultural Wisdom
In this blog, I explore how Lomilomi – a traditional Hawaiian bodywork practice supports deep nervous system, regulation and emotional healing. Drawing on Polyvagal Theory, family systems, and Indigenous wisdom.
Much of the wisdom of Lomilomi is passed through oral tradition, family lineages, and cultural transmission. I write with humility and deep respect for the Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) teachings, knowing that these practices are not mine to claim, but to honour in service.
I share how this sacred practice invites the body, mind and spirit to return home to a sense of safety and connection.
There is a kind of knowing that lives in the body long before words arrive.
It’s the knowing of rhythm. Of breath. Of skin warmed by sun and salt.
It’s the memory of being held — not just by another, but by land, by lineage, by life itself.
Lomilomi is one such remembering.
A rhythmic, reverent return to the body as home.
The Nervous System Healing and the Call to Belong.
In recent years, Polyvagal Theory has offered a language for something many traditional cultures have long known:
safety is not a luxury — it’s the foundation of healing.
Our nervous systems are constantly scanning for cues: Am I safe? Am I welcome? Am I alone?
When safety is felt, the body softens. The breath deepens. Connection becomes possible.
This is the ventral vagal state — where social engagement, rest, and repair live.
Lomilomi, through its rhythmic touch, spacious pacing, and attuned presence, speaks directly to this part of the nervous system.
It says: You are safe now. You are seen. You are held.
The Sacred Rhythms of Touch
Unlike clinical or mechanical forms of massage, Lomilomi emerges from a deeply relational worldview.
It’s not just what is done — it’s how it’s offered.
Each stroke carries intention. Each pause honours the body’s own wisdom.
This mirrors what neuroscience now teaches us: healing happens in co-regulation.
When one system meets another with steadiness and presence, the other can soften, shift, and slowly remember itself whole again.
Touch, when offered with consent, attunement, and cultural reverence, becomes medicine.
A Systemic Tradition of Healing
Hawaiian healing does not separate the body from the family, or the individual from the land.
It is systemic at its core — recognising that disease often arises from disrupted relationships:
with ancestors, with ʻāina (land), with one’s place in the larger web.
This echoes family systems therapy, where symptoms are understood not as individual pathology, but as relational signals — stories that didn’t get to finish, burdens that need to be named.
In Lomilomi, the practitioner may call in the ancestors.
They may offer pule (prayer) or chant.
Not to perform, but to reweave the person back into belonging.
Healing becomes not just a return to self, but a reconnection to something larger —
a web that includes family, culture, story, and spirit.
The Body as Archive
In both modern trauma theory and Indigenous wisdom, the body is not just a vessel — it is an archive.
It holds what wasn’t spoken. It carries what was too much to feel.
Lomilomi invites those stories to surface, not by force, but through invitation.
The long, flowing strokes become a kind of non-verbal dialogue -
a way of saying: You can let go now. You are allowed to rest.
Sometimes what emerges is emotion.
Sometimes it’s silence.
Sometimes it’s the sound of breath finally deepening.
Each is welcome.
Returning to Right Relationship
Healing, in this paradigm, is not about fixing what is broken.
It’s about returning to right relationship - with your body, your nervous system, your ancestors, and the land that holds you.
The Western mind may seek outcomes, but Lomilomi asks different questions:
What if there is nothing wrong with you?
What if the body is simply doing what it knows to survive?
What if healing is a remembering - not striving?
Lomilomi is more than a bodywork practice.
It is a cultural ceremony, a systemic ritual, and a relational offering.
It invites us not just to feel better, but to feel more whole.
In a world that moves too fast and fragments too easily, this work offers a soft, strong reminder:
You belong.
You are held.
You can return.
If this speaks to something stirring in you - an ache, a memory, or a quiet longing to return - you're warmly invited to connect.
Whether you're curious about a session, or simply wish to learn more about how Lomilomi might support your path, I welcome your presence here.
References:
Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation.
Dana, D. (2018). The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation.
Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.
Bowen, M. (1978). Family Therapy in Clinical Practice.
Kahuna Harry Uhane Jim and Garette Arledge (2007). Wise Secrets of Aloha: Learn and Live the Sacred Art of Lomilomi.
Mary Kawana Pukui E. W., Haertig, M.D & Catherine. A. Lee (1972). Nānā i ke kumu: Look to the source. Volume 1.