Spiritual Holistic Healing Centre offering traditional Māori medicine

Heath Caseley and Kamile Hood are testament that out of something challenging sometimes comes something good.

Their new spiritual holistic healing centre on the outskirts of Arrowtown - AIO retreat (All Is One) is well underway with Caseley, an experienced builder, already having built the retreat’s therapy rooms. He’s helping others, offering his spiritual Red Feather Healing services on site.

They’re both trained in Honohono - a traditional Māori medicine that originates from Ngāti Porou (Caseley’s iwi) on the North Island’s East Coast. Caseley is now transitioning off the tools and into healing mode.

He says he and world renowned Queenstown hypnotherapist Anna Duggan recently collaborated with a US TV producer, filming a documentary - “Journeys into the Soul”, which airs on the platform “Gaia” in June-July. Caseley and Duggan feature on season two, episode 10, which is entitled “You are the Power”.

Hood, who has a background in Bowen Therapy, holistic massage, breath work and McLoughlin Scar Tissue Release, is completing studies and working towards her Honohono certificate, alongside being a busy mother of three.

The pair met four years ago while on their own personal healing journeys working with traditional Māori healer Dion Freeman, of “Healing Aotearoa”, who then began training them in traditional Honohono healing practices.

“I’ve been on this land for 11 years now, then I met Heath and he shared my vision for the retreat, so it’s now amplified,” she says.
Hood’s healing journey was heightened after a near death experience during childbirth that only effects one in 50,000 women, while delivering her third child seven years ago. She says she’s very lucky to be alive. Against all medical odds, she survived to tell her story. “We found each other through our healing,” she says.

For Caseley, who rose from rock bottom in Wellington after losing everything dear to him in 2020 due to substance abuse, it’s been such a powerful healing process, and he now wants to help others. “It was massive, then I met Kamile and worked on myself deep within,” he says. He completed ‘Way of the Warrior’ workshops and is now training as a men’s group facilitator.

Now that the therapy rooms are complete, they’ll be building saunas and ice baths on site for hot and cold therapy, all part of the healing process that will be incorporated into their workshops.

Stage two will include a shared communal space and commercial kitchen. This will be available for hire for everyone from families and couples to local, national or international groups, businesses and corporates wanting to bring staff on discovery retreats. CEOs of national companies have already sought out Heath’s services to help them on their journeys.

This includes entrepreneur Dan Hood of well established ‘IHF Health Club’, near Christchurch, and the recently launched ‘Manawa Retreats’. He’s found Caseley’s services to be of great benefit in both his business and personal decisions.

“We look forward to collaborating with Manawa Retreats in the future,” Caseley says.

AIO Retreats will offer an option to stay onsite in cabins or in the main building, marae style. “It’s an evolving vision and a first for the area. We’ll tailor-make the session for each wananga, bringing in different facilitators and guest speakers, but we will definitely be targeting everyone - all races and cultural groups. There will be no segregation,” they both say.

To emphasise this, they’re looking at the concept of a possible circular communal building. “We’ll be about bringing circles together, whether that’s the family unit or a company.”

Caseley’s participated in men’s workshops where all walks of life, including tough exterior blokes, let their guards down and share their innermost struggles. “There’s always something very powerful about letting go and being vulnerable,” he says. “When you’re in a circle like that and connecting in that space that’s when that magic comes out.”

The bigger vision is to become a destination retreat for people from around the world.

They’re currently working through concepts for the design of Stage Two. “We’d like that building - that will be able to facilitate more workshops, up and running in a year for hui and the likes, but we have a lot of hurdles to jump.”

Hood says they’re also keen to grow plants from which to prepare traditional herbal remedies and healing oils to use in the treatments. If possible, they’d like to include the option for any private chefs to also use produce off the land to cater for retreat groups.