Te Whare Tapa Whā and Māori health models

Te Whare Tapa Whā means “the four-sided house”: whare ‘house’, tapa ‘side’ and whā ‘four’. It is the Māori health model, credited to Sir Mason Durie, that pictures wellbeing as a meeting house with four walls: taha tinana ‘the body’, taha hinengaro ‘the mind’, taha wairua ‘the spirit’ and taha whānau ‘family’, standing on the whenua ‘land’. Each wall is a taha, a side. This guide explains the words rather than the medicine: what each name means, how it is built, and the same vocabulary in two other Māori models, Te Wheke and Te Pae Mahutonga, and in the everyday words for health and wellbeing, hauora, ora and oranga.

Updated 22 October 2026 · 8 min read

Tap 🔊 to hear an example. Māori examples play Papa Reo, the te reo Māori voice made by Te Hiku Media from recordings of native speakers.

Te Whare Tapa Whā, word by word

Word	Te Aka’s meaning	In the model
whare	house, building, dwelling; also the people in a house	The house. The Ministry of Health says the model uses the wharenui ‘meeting house’ as its symbol.
tapa	margin, edge, rim; in geometry, the side of a polygon	side
whā	four	the four walls
taha	side, margin, edge; also part, portion, section	Each dimension is a taha: one side of the house, one part of a person’s health.
tinana	body, the main part of anything; self, person	physical health
hinengaro	mind, thought, intellect, consciousness, awareness	mental and emotional health
wairua	spirit, soul, which exists beyond death; also feel, mood, atmosphere	spiritual health
whānau	extended family, family group; to be born	family and social health
whenua	land, country, ground, territory; also placenta	the foundation, in the Mental Health Foundation’s version

The four walls and the foundation as the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand draws the model. The order of the walls varies from source to source; the model gives them equal weight.

Two details of the name are worth knowing. Te Aka writes the adjective as one word, tapawhā ‘four-sided; rectangle, quadrilateral’, while the model’s name keeps tapa whā as two. And taha is an everyday word, not a medical one: Te Aka’s senses include the bank of a river, and the course uses it in directions: Kei te taha o te awa te whare. ‘The house is beside the river.’ The model turns the parts of a person into the sides of a building, so that if one wall is damaged, the Ministry says, a person “may become ‘unbalanced’ and subsequently unwell”.

The four walls

The Ministry of Health describes each wall as a capacity, and the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand, which uses the model in its resources, describes each in plainer words:

Wall	Ministry of Health	Mental Health Foundation
taha tinana	“the capacity for physical growth and development”	“how your body feels and how you care for it”
taha hinengaro	“the capacity to communicate, to think and to feel”	“your mind, heart, conscience, thoughts and feelings”
taha wairua	“the capacity for faith and wider communication”	“your relationship with the environment, people and heritage in the past, present and future”
taha whānau	“the capacity to belong, care and share where individuals are part of wider social systems”	“who makes you feel you belong, who you care about and who you share your life with”

Where Māori places thought and feeling, in words such as hinengaro, ngākau and whatumanawa, and the words for the feelings themselves, are in Māori words for feelings. Why wairua and mauri are two different things, where English says “spirit” for both, is explained in Māori words with no English equivalent.

Whānau reaches further than the English family. Te Aka notes that in modern use it “is sometimes used to include friends who may not have any kinship ties”, and the Mental Health Foundation’s taha whānau includes your hoamahi, your colleagues. The family words themselves are in Māori family words.

Whenua, the foundation

The Mental Health Foundation adds a fifth element under the four walls: “Our connection with the whenua/land forms the foundation.” It describes whenua as “the place where you stand”, the land through which you are connected to your tūpuna ‘ancestors’, and also as any place of belonging, from home to a sports team to your place of study or mahi ‘work’. Whenua is also the word for the placenta; the land words and that double meaning are in Māori words for nature.

Where the accounts differ

The model is told slightly differently by different sources, and this page does not choose between them:

Point	What the sources say
The date	The Mental Health Foundation says Durie developed the model in 1984. Durie set out the four dimensions in a journal paper published in 1985. The New Zealand Curriculum cites his work of 1994.
Whenua	The Mental Health Foundation names whenua as the foundation. The Ministry of Health speaks of the wharenui’s “strong foundations” without naming them. The summary of Durie’s 1985 paper names four cornerstones and does not mention land.
The house	The Ministry and the Foundation describe a wharenui. The 1985 summary speaks of “four cornerstones of health”, and says they were “defined for Maori people by their elders, at traditional tribal gatherings”.
Hinengaro in English	“a psychic dimension” (Durie, 1985); “mental” (Ministry of Health); “mental and emotional wellbeing” (Mental Health Foundation, New Zealand Curriculum)
Whānau in English	“a family dimension” (Durie, 1985); “family” (Ministry of Health); “family and social wellbeing” (Mental Health Foundation); “social well-being” (New Zealand Curriculum)

Te Wheke: the octopus and its eight arms

Te Wheke is a model the Ministry of Health credits to Dr Rose Pere. Wheke is the octopus (Te Aka: “octopus, squid”). In the Ministry’s account the head is the whānau, the eyes are waiora, “total wellbeing”, and each of the eight tentacles is one dimension of health. The Ministry names them like this, and Te Aka glosses the words inside each name:

Tentacle, as the Ministry writes it	The Ministry’s English	The words inside it (Te Aka)
wairuatanga	spirituality	wairua ‘spirit’ + -tanga, the ending that turns a word into the quality it names; Te Aka: “spirituality”
hinengaro	the mind	mind, thought, consciousness
taha tinana	physical wellbeing	the body side, as in Te Whare Tapa Whā
whanaungatanga	extended family	whanaunga ‘relative, kin’ + -tanga; Te Aka: “relationship, kinship, sense of family connection”
mauri	life force in people and objects	“life principle, life force, vital essence”
mana ake	unique identity of individuals and family	mana ‘prestige, authority, status’ + ake ‘own, very own’
hā a koro ma, a kui ma	breath of life from forbears	hā ‘breath, essence’; koro ‘elderly man, grandfather’; kui ‘elderly woman, grandma’; mā after a term of address makes it plural, so koro mā are the old men and kui mā the old women
whatumanawa	the open and healthy expression of emotion	“seat of emotions, heart, mind”; also the kidney

The Ministry prints koro ma and kui ma without the macron; Te Aka spells the plural word mā, with a long vowel, and that is how it is said. Two of the arms, hinengaro and taha tinana, are the same words as two walls of Te Whare Tapa Whā, and whanaungatanga is built on the same family root as whānau.

Te Pae Mahutonga: the Southern Cross

Te Pae Mahutonga is a framework for health promotion that the Ministry of Health credits to Durie. The Ministry says the name is a Māori name for the Southern Cross. Te Aka lists the constellation as Māhutonga, with a long first vowel, and pae has many senses there, among them horizon, perch, range and region. The four central stars of the Cross are four tasks of health promotion, and the two Pointers are the two foundations:

Star, as the Ministry writes it	The Ministry’s English	The words inside it (Te Aka)
mauriora	cultural identity	mauri ‘life force’ + ora ‘alive, well’
waiora	physical environment	“health, soundness”
toiora	healthy lifestyles	“to be sound, uninjured”; “well-being, welfare”
te oranga	participation in society	oranga: “livelihood, welfare, health, living”
ngā manukura (a Pointer)	community leadership	manukura: “person held in high esteem, leader in council, leader”
te mana whakahaere (a Pointer)	autonomy	mana whakahaere: “governance, authority, jurisdiction, management”

Waiora does a different job in each model. In Te Wheke it is the eyes, the Ministry’s “total wellbeing”; in Te Pae Mahutonga it is a star standing for the physical environment. Te Aka’s own gloss, “health, soundness”, sits under both. Matariki, the other star cluster New Zealanders know by its Māori name, has its own guide: Matariki words.

Hauora, ora and the other wellbeing words

Most Māori words for health are built on ora, which Te Aka gives as “to be alive, well, safe, cured, recovered, healthy” and, as a noun, “life, health, vitality”. It is the ora in kia ora, explained in Māori greetings.

Word	Te Aka’s meaning
ora	to be alive, well, safe, healthy; life, health, vitality
hauora	be fit, well, healthy, vigorous, in good spirits; health, vigour
oranga	livelihood, welfare, health, living; also food, survivor
waiora	health, soundness
toiora	sound, uninjured; well-being, welfare
mauri	life principle, life force, vital essence
hauora tinana	physical health
hauora hinengaro	mental health
hauora wairua	spiritual health

The last three are Te Whare Tapa Whā’s walls again, with hauora in front in place of taha: health of the body, of the mind, of the spirit. Manatū Hauora, Te Aka notes, is the Ministry of Health. Te Aka records a different sense for the pair mauri ora, written as two words: “conscious”, as in awake.

Hauora in schools and at work

Children in New Zealand meet these words in health and physical education. The glossary of the New Zealand Curriculum says that in that subject “the use of the word hauora is based on Mason Durie’s Te Whare Tapa Whā model”, and that hauora and well-being, “though not synonyms, share much common ground”. It lists the same four taha: wairua, spiritual; hinengaro, mental and emotional; tinana, physical; whānau, social. The curriculum is being rewritten, and the same Tāhūrangi page says the updated health and PE learning area will be required from 2027.

The Mental Health Foundation publishes a worksheet for children, “Fill my Whare Tapa Whā”, and its version of the model is written with workplaces in mind as well: colleagues belong to taha whānau, and work can be one of the places of belonging that whenua stands for. For words chosen to carry no stigma in mental health and disability, see Te Reo Hāpai, the glossary described in takiwātanga; Durie wrote its foreword.

A Pacific contrast: the Fonofale

Pacific peoples in New Zealand have models of their own. One is the Fonofale, which Fuimaono Karl Pulotu-Endemann, born in Sāmoa and New Zealand’s first Pacific registered psychiatric nurse, says he developed in 1985. E-Tangata reports that the Mental Health Commission accepted it as the standard for treating Pacific mental health. In his words, family is “at the heart of the Fonofale model”, which “promotes a holistic understanding of health and wellbeing”. Its name contains the Samoan fale, house, the same inherited word as Māori whare: POLLEX, the Polynesian comparative dictionary, sets them side by side. So both names, Te Whare Tapa Whā and Fonofale, have a house in them. How Māori and Samoan words line up is in Māori vs Samoan and Tongan.

Nearly every word on this page, from tinana and whenua to hauora and waiora, is taught in Verbavia’s free te reo Māori course.