Meditations for Mauli Ola: Six Audio Practices for Namahana School's Ola Framework
Pilina Center for Wellbeing is honored to share a new collection of six guided meditation audios created in collaboration with Namahana School, the North Shore of Kauaʻi's first public, tuition-free middle and high school. At Namahana's request, PCW founder Jo Qinaʻau designed the recordings to bring the school's Ola Framework to life through mind-body practice, with one meditation for each of its six values.
The Ola Framework is Namahana's Hawaiian interpretation of six nationally recognized measures of health, developed by the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, adapted for a youth audience by Big Picture Learning. Beyond asking, How academically successful are our students?, the framework explores a deeper question: Are our students healthy? Each value pairs a measure of wellbeing with a Hawaiian concept and a guiding question, inviting students to consider not only their own health, but the health of their ʻāina, culture, community, and ʻohana.
The value of pono.
The six audios follow the framework's values: Hoʻomaha (rest and stress management), Hānai (nourishment and nutrition), Hoʻōla (rejuvenation and sleep), Pono (balance and avoiding toxicity), Mana (strength and physical activity), and Pilina (healthy relationships). Each practice is short, accessible, and designed for middle school students. In Hoʻomaha, students move through progressive muscle relaxation and intentional hā (breathing), then extend that ease outward to their ʻohana. When meditating on Hānai, they slow down and kilo, observe with curiosity and aloha, a single piece of food, tracing the ʻāina and people who nourished it into being. In their Mana recording, they bring to mind a kupuna and receive a message of ancestral strength and admiration. Throughout, every instruction is offered as an invitation, with students empowered to choose what feels safe and sustainable for them.
Meditation gives our students a skill they'll carry for life, one that also brings our Ola Framework into their bodies, not just their minds. We intentionally end the day with it, so calm and a focus on their health and wellness is the last thing we're offering them before they head home." — Kapua Chandler, School Leader, Namahana School
The recordings weave together Jo's decades of contemplative teaching with a distinctly ʻŌiwi grounding, influenced by their Ke Ao Nōweo ʻUla (KANU) theory of Native Hawaiian wellbeing. They reflect a design philosophy PCW brings to every context: culturally grounded, trauma-informed, and rooted in relationship.
Students at Namahana School.
This care for context is what defines PCW's program design. Over the years, Jo has developed and manualized mind-body programs across community, clinical, military, and academic settings, tailoring each one to the people and place it serves. At Massachusetts Mental Health Center (Harvard Medical School / Beth Israel Deaconess), they designed a mindfulness and wellness group for patients with serious mental illness and trained resident psychiatrists to lead it. At Tripler Army Medical Center, they designed and delivered a Mindful Movement program for a multidisciplinary behavioral health clinic and trained military mental health colleagues to ensure its sustainability. With UCSF, they developed Mindful CREW, a trauma-informed program to regulate bias and support equity in healthcare settings. To support community mauli ola, they co-created Hawaiʻi's first Kanaka ʽŌiwi–centered Yoga Teacher Training. In each case, the work begins with the community it is meant to serve, and the same commitment shaped these meditations for Namahana's students.
We are grateful to Namahana School for the opportunity to support their vision of education as a piko, a center and life source, that nourishes the mind, body, and spirit of North Shore youth. Eō Namahana!
The six Ola Framework meditations are available now on both the Pilina Center and Namahana School websites.
