Patients flock to traditional healer
Last updated 23:53 16/01/2009

Peter Meecham

 
HOLISTIC APPROACH: Traditional Maori healer Heeni Phillips sees hundreds of people each year.

Sitting in the warmth of Heeni Phillips' living room, it is easy to see how she gets people talking.

 
The 69-year-old is one of the country's most revered traditional Maori healers and one of a handful to still have a strong spiritual element in her work.

 
Every available surface in her Bishopdale home is full of framed photos of smiling babies, some of the many grandchildren from her array of whangai (adopted children).

 
Steaming cups of tea arrive alongside a constant stream of plates loaded with sandwiches, savouries and cream buns delivered by volunteers of Te Rapana Trust, which is run from the house.

 
The trust is a free traditional-healing service delivered under contract by Maori development organisation He Oranga Pounamu and used by about 650 people over the past year.

 
When Phillips travels around the South Island, people queue for hours to see her and receive her herbal remedies.

 
Clients visit her at home with "anything and everything", she says.
Their illnesses include skin complaints, respiratory problems and mental health issues, but sometimes people just need to talk.

 
"The best thing to do to get them to relax is give them a cup of tea and something to eat. Most of the time I know their background and they just keep on talking and talking, and the next minute I know what's wrong," she says.

 
Patients have been known to stay up to three weeks, living, eating and visiting Phillips until they feel happy or well enough to return home.
"A lot of it is curiosity, but when they get better from whatever concoction you give them, they get flabbergasted that such an insignificant-looking plant helped them," she says.

 
As a child she knew to look for cobwebs to cover a cut and koromiko to treat babies' teething pains, but never considered healing to be her life's calling until one of the country's most widely respected tohunga (priestly experts) had a vision of his successor.

 
Phillips says Rapana Hemi was travelling to the South Island by boat when he had a vision of her name and later found her in a Christchurch marae.
Born in Gisborne, Phillips is now one of 16 Ministry of Health-funded rongoa practitioners around the country.
He Oranga Pounamu chief executive Fiona Pimm says when Canterbury was offered funding for a healer, the community responded with 100 per cent support for Phillips.

 
"The general population has always sought alternatives to traditional Western medicine. More and more people are starting to recognise that traditional Maori medicine has got a place alongside conventional medicine," Pimm says.
The holistic approach taken by Maori healers is important to many people looking to take care of their spiritual and emotional wellbeing, she says. "She [Phillips] works with a number of GPs who respect what she does."

 
Hornby GP Matea Gillies, a doctor for 30 years, remembers his grandmother using traditional remedies that were "very effective".
"For me, this has all been part of my natural life," he says.
Gillies says he refers patients to Phillips in much the same way as he would to an osteopath.

 
"One of our mistakes is thinking orthodox medicine is the only way to go. It has a very strong place, but others have a place as well," he says.
Phillips and an army of volunteers travel to the West Coast every three months to collect plants such as koromiko, kawakawa and piripiri, which are then dried or boiled, bottled and blessed.