Brainology Program

Ho'oponopono is a Hawaiian word meaning “to make right”. It began as a process families used to set right a strained relationship, led by a respected, impartial elder called the haku. Since the 1970s teachers have adapted it into personal practices, and the best known is four short phrases said quietly about one problem. This page treats those phrases as a modern adaptation, offered as a reflection exercise.

No one has shown how it works, and research on the phrases themselves is very limited. As a practice it is simple: you hold a person, a memory or a feeling in mind, say the four phrases slowly, and notice what comes up. The traditional process works differently, through a family speaking honestly with a haku. Treat the four phrases as a reflection exercise whose effects you observe for yourself.

This page prescribes no duration or daily routine. Reading the phrases as reflection is different from learning the traditional family process, which belongs with Hawaiian teachers and sources.

It can give you a quiet, regular way to turn toward a hurt and your own part in it. Whether forgiveness follows depends on you and on the hurt, and no practice can promise it. If you were harmed, you are not asked to take the blame, you can keep your distance, and you can stop at any point.

The traditional Hawaiian process opens and closes with prayer, and the personal method from the 1970s is built on prayer to a Divine Creator. The four-phrase form does not require a belief in anything. People say it as a quiet reflection, to a person, to themselves or to whatever they pray to. If prayer-like words feel uncomfortable, say the phrases to the situation in mind, or stay with what each one says: you regret something, you ask, you give thanks, you wish well.