09/07/2026
Matariki has once again offered us deep learning and connection here in Aotearoa, and with it, a much needed pause in the middle of winter. This year marks our third year of activating rāhui as a deliberate practice for our Tāiki e! whānau and whare, and with each year, our understanding of what this practice asks of us has grown.
From the 10th to the 17th of July, Tāiki e! will once again close our whare and step into rāhui. Deeply rooted in the concept of tapu, creating an intentional and sacred space, rāhui have been used by our tīpuna for generations, deployed in recognition that there are times when inactivity and inward resilience building are necessary for long term sustainability, abundance and collective wellbeing. Rāhui have supported environmental restoration and regeneration, and ensured spiritual and cultural safety at certain times. We continue to draw on this tikanga, humbled by what it teaches us each year we return to it.
This year, something has shifted in how we prepare. Where once rāhui arrived somewhat abruptly, we have now begun to allow more lead in time, more preparation, more conversation before the stillness begins. We have come to understand, more deeply than before, that this is not a singular or individualistic pursuit. The rest and regeneration period is a collective one. Doing it together, all of us stepping back at the same time, is an incredibly powerful and liberating force. There is something in the shared nature of it that makes the stillness possible in a way it might not be alone.
We have also come to understand how difficult this is. For people who are normally busy, active, always moving toward the next thing, doing "nothing" does not come easily. Rāhui asks us to unpack ourselves a little, and this can be genuinely challenging. In truth, our busyness often obscures the more complex parts of ourselves, the parts we quietly run from. So when the busyness is taken away, stillness can feel like an uncomfortable place to sit. And yet it is also a sanctuary. A place to take off the weight, the expectation, the endless noise of thought, and simply be.
Leaning into this learning, we are seeing a deeper humility that exists within rest. It is not weakness. It is not laziness. It is maturation. It is wisdom. There is a quiet courage required to stop, and a maturity in recognising that our worth is not measured only by our output.
It is also important to recognise that rāhui is not just about the people. It is about the whare and the kaupapa that absorb us, that hold us, that cloak us in their own way throughout the year. Our kaupapa is a living entity; the whare its expression. They also require pause and sanctuary. Before we close our whare for this time, we clean them, we prepare them, as a form of gratitude. This is not a task to tick off. It is a relationship we are honouring, one that asks something of us in return for all it gives.
Implementing rāhui in this way is still not without its challenges. It requires careful navigation of tikanga, and we recognise it is not always feasible for everyone to fully participate given differing circumstances. But even a moment of consideration, a pause to reflect on one's own need for rest, is valuable.
As we sit in our third year of this practice, we find ourselves asking a bigger question. If a small roopu like ours can find such value in collective rest, what might it mean for rāhui, or something like it, to be considered more widely as a social policy tool? What could our workplaces, our communities, even our systems of governance look like if rest and regeneration were treated not as indulgence, but as infrastructure, essential to the long term wellbeing and productivity of the people within them? Not a holiday; a rest.
What can you do to create spaces of intentional, collective rest? And what might change if we stopped treating stillness as something to fit around busyness, and instead built our busyness around the need for stillness?
