Today I’m going to tell you about a well kept secret that can help purify your mind and soul of negative feelings, emotions, memories, and strongholds that keep us from our higher selves.

The best part? You can do this at any moment, any place, simply by repeating a matter of 10 words to yourself, out loud or silently.

In fact, the only difficult part about it is remembering how to spell it!

So….what’s the secret?

Ho’oponopono.

Ho’oponopono is an ancient Hawaiian spiritual practice/ritual that translates into:

I love you.
I’m sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you. 

It’s a practice of healing and forgiveness. At the core of it, it’s acknowledging that we are responsible for everything in our lives. Therefore you can use it in any situation with any person in any circumstance. It’s an energetic vibration/frequency and so by saying it you are transmitting healing, love, and reconciliation to the other party.

There’s a well-known story of a therapist and teacher, Dr Ihaleakala Hew Len, who was hired by a psychiatric ward to come on board as a consultant. When they called him, things were completely out of control; patients were not taking their medication, they were acting out and unruly, and staff were quitting in droves because of the hostile work environment. The therapist agreed to come on board under one condition: he would not physically see a single patient.

Instead, he spent each day pulling out the files of individual patients reading their names, looking at their picture and saying “[Name], I love you, I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you.” and would repeat this sequence many times. Believe it or not, in a matter of weeks, patients were back on their meds, chaos diminished, and employee morale increased significantly.

By acknowledging that, he too, is partly to blame for any suffering that exists–and asking for forgiveness while transmitting loving energy–it is believed that he made a great difference. Perhaps it was all coincidence, I guess no one can really say for sure, but myself and many others have experienced similar phenomena through the practice of Ho’oponopono.

Here are a couple of situations that you can try it in:

• Relationships
• Estranged friends/family members
• When you feel a distance, emotionally or physically, with a loved one
• Love ones that have passed
• Your childhood bully
• Coworkers
• Customers
• Animals
• Strangers
• Anyone who has wronged you or that you have wronged
• Exes

There have even been stories of people using it prior to making sales calls or sending emails that concluded with favorable outcomes. When we are able to find peace with things that are lingering inside such as hurt, anger, sorrow, jealousy, resentment, etc., we become lighter and more free.

In my own personal life, it has transformed a number of areas. It has helped me have more empathy and compassion for not only my self, but for my family, friends, staff, gym members, personal training clients, and prospective customers. It has healed broken relationships. There have been 2 distinct occasions where, after practicing Ho’oponopono while running outside, and using their specific name in the sequence, I came back to find a text message from two different friends I hadn’t talked to in months.

I will often utter the phrases to myself while looking directly at the person I am talking to, and I immediately feel a stronger connection with him or her. I will also employ it whenever I feel that I have let someone down or disappointed someone unintentionally. It always works!

Finally, while more difficult, you can use this as a form of meditation for forgiving someone that you believe has wrongfully treated you. It is the best way I’ve found to cleanse the mind and clear out and ill-feelings that keep us from inner peace.

As the quote goes, “holding on to resentment is like drinking poison hoping someone else gets sick”.

Give it a shot! Ho’oponopono.