Skip to main content

Te Whare Tapa Whā

Take an in-depth, holistic approach to understanding mental health, addiction, and wellbeing by using Te Whare Tapa Whā.

What is Te Whare Tapa Whā?

Te Whare Tapa Whā is a Māori health model developed by Sir Mason Durie in 1984 that looks at health and wellbeing as the four walls of a wharenui/meeting house.

The four walls are taha tinana/physical wellbeing, taha wairua/spiritual health or sense of identity, taha whānau/family and community health, and taha hinengaro/mental and emotional health. The foundation is the connection with whenua/land.

Te Whare Tapa Whā provides a holistic view of health and wellbeing. Like the wharenui, a person must have four strong walls and a strong foundation to thrive. When the strength of one or more walls is weakened, our wellbeing is impacted.

While things in life can weaken our walls, there are things we can do to rebalance our wharenui, to strengthen our walls.

The Te Whare Tapa Whā model is used throughout Blueprint for Learning workshops. This means we take an in-depth, holistic approach to understanding mental health and wellbeing. It is a useful framework to identify the things that may be impacting your mental health and wellbeing, and what you can do to strengthen each wall.

In this video, Deaf facilitator Celia King explains Te Whare Tapa Whā in New Zealand Sign Language.

The four walls of Te Whare Tapa Whā

Learn more about Te Whare Tapa Whā

Want to learn more about how to use Te Whare Tapa Whā to support your mental health and wellbeing, and that of others? The Te Whare Tapa Whā framework is used throughout our workshops, including MH101®, our mental health workshop; Addiction 101, our addiction literacy workshop; and Stress, Resilience and Wellbeing, a 2.5-hour online workshop. These are great workshops to learn the foundations of how Te Whare Tapa Whā can be used to understand mental health and addiction challenges, and manage and improve mental health and wellbeing.

Wise Group logo

Blueprint for Learning is part of the Wise Group Copyright ©2024