Kauri: What Our Feet Remember

Reflections from In Communion with Rākau | 27 October 2026

During our morning communion with Kauri, I found myself returning to the relationship between our waewae and Papatūānuku. It is a relationship that is so familiar to us, so much a part of our everyday existence, that we may seldom give it our attention.

Our feet carry us throughout our lives. They bring us into contact with the whenua, supporting our movement, our balance and our ability to stand. Yet how often do we pause to acknowledge them, or consider the relationship they hold with Papatūānuku?

As we settled into our meditation, I invited everyone to bring their awareness into their waewae. Even when our feet are not resting directly upon the whenua, we can remember the sensation of being connected to Papatūānuku. Our feet know what she feels like.

I began to contemplate the kūwaha, the openings through which we experience this relationship, and the movement of mauri between ourselves and Papatūānuku.

As we brought our attention into our feet, we allowed ourselves to become aware of whatever sensations emerged. There might be warmth, tingling or a gentle movement felt throughout the tinana. There was no need to direct or control the experience. We were simply allowing ourselves to receive.

Within my practice of rongoā, mirimiri is not limited to the physical movement of hands upon the body. There is also an old traditional form of energetic mirimiri, where we work directly with mauri through our focused awareness and intention, without the need for physical touch.

When we bring our attention into a particular area of the tinana, our aro goes there, and the mauri responds. The area begins to activate and stimulate, and as we continue to rest our awareness there, the presence of mauri can become stronger. We can consciously direct the mauri into that area, building and strengthening it through our attention, while also allowing it to respond naturally and move wherever it needs to go. It does not necessarily remain where our attention first settled.

During our meditation with Kauri, we practised this form of mirimiri through our waewae. By bringing our awareness into our feet, we were able to work with our own mauri while becoming conscious of the living relationship between ourselves and Papatūānuku.

There was something beautiful in the simplicity of this exchange. We were not only receiving nourishment from Papatūānuku. We were also offering our own mauri in return.

This is reciprocity.

As our awareness deepened, my thoughts returned to Kauri and the roots extending into the whenua.

I began to imagine our waewae becoming the roots of Kauri, reaching deeply into Papatūānuku. Through this experience, we could offer the same attention and care to the roots of Kauri that we were offering to our own feet.

I was reminded of the challenges facing Kauri, particularly the disease that affects its roots and interferes with its ability to receive nourishment from the whenua.

In an earlier meditation, I had contemplated how this disruption might mirror our own diminished awareness of our relationship with Papatūānuku. Now, another understanding was emerging.

What if, through the practice of mirimiri, we could extend our aroha and awareness beyond ourselves and into our relationship with Kauri?

As we imagined our waewae becoming the roots of Kauri, we were invited to acknowledge the nourishment flowing from Papatūānuku and to offer our own mauri in return. This was not an attempt to physically treat the disease, but an expression of care, relationship and reciprocity.

We were remembering that Kauri, too, exists within this living exchange.

The experience brought me back to something I have come to understand through my years of working with rākau. They are not simply plants that we observe or learn to identify. They are living relations whose presence can reveal something about ourselves.

Kauri, in all its majesty, offers us a powerful reflection of our relationship with the natural world.

When we become attentive to the wellbeing of Kauri, we may also begin to recognise the places within ourselves that are asking for greater attention, care and connection.

Perhaps we have become so accustomed to moving through our days that we have forgotten to acknowledge the very parts of ourselves that keep us connected to Papatūānuku.

Our waewae carry us, yet we rarely pause to offer them the same aroha that we so readily extend to others.

During this meditation, we were invited to do both: to honour ourselves and to honour Papatūānuku, allowing the relationship between us to be experienced rather than merely understood.

As we came towards the end of our communion, we returned our awareness to the manawa, giving thanks to Papatūānuku and acknowledging Kauri for the understanding that had emerged.

I was left contemplating how something as simple as bringing our attention into our feet could open a much deeper awareness of the relationships that sustain us.

We do not need to travel far into the ngahere to begin this practice. We can start wherever we are, by becoming still, feeling our waewae and remembering Papatūānuku.

Our feet remember her.

And perhaps, through remembering, we begin to recognise more fully the reciprocity that has always existed between us.

These reflections emerged through the practice of In Communion with Rākau, a daily meditation practice within the Rongoā Mauri Collective.