Our Te Whare Tapa Whā challenge for Wellness Month.

Published 8 September 2021

Our Te Whare Tapa Whā challenge for Wellness Month

Te Whare Tapa Whā, a Maori health model designed by Sire Mason Durie in 1984. Image taken from MHAW. — *Te Whare Tapa Whā, a Maori health model designed by Sire Mason Durie in 1984. Image taken from* *MHAW*.

We have always been passionate about our staff’s wellbeing, and we also recognise the important intersection between wellness and environmental sustainability. This is why we embarked on a month-long wellness challenge, centred on Te Whare Tapa Whā - a Māori health model that describes wellbeing, or hauora, as a whare with four walls.

Our collective health is directly tied to the health of our environment: weather, particularly the temperature, and the quality of the air, water, and soil has a huge impact on our physical heath, and research is beginning to show the powerful ties between the state of the environment and our mental health. As Umbrella Wellbeing, a New Zealand-based wellness consulting company, highlighted:

Isabelle had a crack at painting & learnt that she’s actually quite good at it.

“Recent academic research is beginning to document acute and chronic mental health issues related to concerns about climate change (terms like “eco-anxiety” have been coined), including post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety. The consequences of these issues are likely to compound an already stretched mental health system, making them an issue for more and more individuals, as well as their communities and their workplaces. Now, more than ever – for a variety of reasons – neither mental health nor sustainability in the workplace can be ignored.”

At the Trust, we know that a healthier planet means healthier humans, but we also think it works in reverse: people who take care of their wellbeing are better placed to take care of the environment’s wellbeing. There's an old saying that “you can't pour from an empty cup”, which means we cannot take care of anyone else, including the planet, until we take care of ourselves first.

Bearing all this important whakaaro in mind, we decided to run our first ever Wellness Month at the Trust over August and designed a wellness challenge based on Te Whare Tapa Whā. Te Whare Tapa Whā is a Māori health model that describes wellbeing, or hauora, as a whare with four walls: taha tinana/physical heath, taha hinengaro/mental health, taha whanau/family & social health, and taha wairua/spiritual health. The foundation of the whare is our connection with whenua – the land.

What we did.

Week one: Taha Tinana (physical wellbeing)

Walk to work every day, no matter the weather
Avoid eating processed sugar for the week
Drink at least 2 litres of water every day

Week two: Taha Hinengaro (mental wellbeing)

See a sunrise and mindfully enjoy it
Meditate every morning
Block all social media apps for the week

Week three: Taha Whānau (family & social wellbeing)

Have lunch with my grandma and create a family tree with her
Reach out to a friend I haven’t spoken to in a long time
Babysit my sister’s kids so she can have a night out

Week four: Taha Wairua (spiritual wellbeing)

Get out in nature every day for the week
Sing a waiata at home with family
Attend church with someone in my family

Our Wellness Challenge hit a bit of a rough patch when New Zealand went into lockdown, but our team got creative and continued to check in with one another – including virtual Friday drinks organised as someone’s taha whānau goal. A lot of staff said that having extra motivation to take care of their wellbeing during lockdown was really helpful.