Connecting with rongoā Māori to help clients

With over 25 years of experience in hair and make-up and a master’s degree in Applied Indigenous Knowledge, Bianca Fallon has seen a huge need for rongoā Māori medicine in her business.

Rongoā Māori is traditional Māori healing, incorporating herbal remedies, physical therapies and spiritual healing.

“They are coming to me for hair and make-up, but it ends up being about something else. Particularly after lockdown, clients have been coming in and they have mental health issues,” Fallon said.

In 2022 ACC began offering rongoā Māori services for all injured New Zealanders, to help them rehabilitate from a covered injury.

Fallon is one of 133 registered rongoā Māori practitioners in Aotearoa and one of the 18 registered in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland where she now lives.

“ACC has acknowledged that the way we heal ourselves works for Māori and for everybody else who is open to healing within that space,” she said.

Fallon caters to private clients, in hair, make-up, styling, and rongoā from her home-based studio on the North Shore.

As the daughter of former All Whites coach Kevin Fallon and sister to current interim All Whites assistant coach Rory Fallon, football was a huge part of her upbringing. It was what took her away from her tūrangawaewae in Gisborne.

“I should have been brought up on my marae. I should have had my tohunga beside me to teach me. It doesn’t matter that it’s taken this long — the fact is that I’m here now.”

Her journey to rongoā began at Whakaata Māori where she was head of hair and make-up from 2003 to 2011.

“When I was at Māori TV I got rid of all the mainstream products that were filled with talc and lots of chemicals. I just felt for some reason I had to go down this mineral path,” Fallon said.

During her master’s research, she discovered Māori wore kōkōwai (red ochre) combined with shark liver oil for its medicinal purposes but also to ward off unwanted spirits.

She uses mineral cosmetics, karakia, sound vibrations, and cleansing rituals, to shift a client’s mauri (life force or essence).

Different states of mauri can help to explain different levels of wellbeing.

For example, mauri noho (languishing); mauri rere (unsettled), mauri oho (activated); mauri tau (in balance), and mauri ora (flourishing).

“They’re coming in highly tapu (sacred) and I’ve got to lay hands on them. So my job is to get them back to tau, get them balanced, and shapeshift them so that their wairua reconnects with mauri ora,” she said.

While her aim is to get her clients to mauri ora she believes our mauri is constantly changing and we can’t be in mauri ora 100 percent of the time.

“We change every single minute of the day, every time we change our mind, and our emotions. One minute we’re angry or sad, and the next minute we’re happy.

“Those are all states of mauri that shapeshift us,” she says.

Fallon also believes that clothing, haircuts, and make-up can be used to create a shift in a person’s mauri.

She has been asked by Toi Mai Workforce Development Council to sit on the hair and make-up advisory board.

Toi Mai is the workforce development council for creative, cultural, recreation, and technology.

“My job is in a bi-cultural way to explain to these policymakers, this is why Māori think the way they do, and also help Māori to understand the way our governments, universities, and our policymakers think, so that everyone feels safe,” she said.

Te Aka Whai Ora (Māori Health Authority) and the Ministry of Health are both working on strategies to support and encourage rongoā Māori in New Zealand.

There are currently no qualification requirements for rongoā Māori practitioners. However, practitioners must follow the Health and Disability Services Consumers Rights code.

To locate an ACC-accredited rongoā Māori practitioner go to www.acc.co.nz.