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All of us at Te Ahi Ora have been shaped by Fire & Flow.
Many of us had struggled to find our places in the past, so we quickly gravitated towards this source of knowledge and motivation. Through learning together, and exploring the various moves, combos, and techniques, we have formed lifelong friendships and connections.
This discipline helped us to learn how to learn, how to focus, and to identify and deal with unhealthy habits. It has helped us deal with anxiety and depression, giving us clear goals and measurable targets to grow towards.
It has strengthened our muscles, given us amazing amounts of energy and drive, and allowed us to become incredibly quick and accurate. When combined with the Tai Qi and Yoga (basically Flow without the staff!), we found ways to calm and control our minds – especially important in the our info-saturated modern world.
The values contained within Fire & Flow are supportive and positive, based on openly sharing knowledge, self challenge, encouraging others, celebrating accomplishments, controlled risk, and creative play.
We have been powerfully shaped by this amazing art form, and as a result have dedicated our lives and careers to spreading the discipline, because we know that they hold the potential to help thousands of others, just as much as they have helped us.
This is the promise of Te Ahi Ora. If you follow the exercises, join the clubs, and progress through the levels – your life WILL change for the better. We try to make it as accessible, enjoyable, and as easy as possible, for all involved, but you still have to show up!
Our society face many difficulties in the modern age, and things will only become more challenging in our shared future. Te Ahi Ora presents you with a clear and engaging pathway towards personal growth through regaining control over the mind, healing the body, and strengthening our shared bond
As we spread across the country and deliver programmes in new regions and communities, we will set up practice clubs in our wake at every participating school and city, leaving you practice equipment, and providing support in the form of online lessons and challenges for club members.
We aim to return every 3/6 months to deliver more lessons and performances, bringing the clubs together from all across the district.
Starting in 2024, we will host 4 Te Ahi Ora festival spread throughout the country, bringing together members from all across the country to learn, perform, and meet new friends from all over Aotearoa. In January of 2025 – we will host our first National Championship.
We implement a new model of performing art/sport hybrid, incorporating the best of both worlds. The Fire and Flow arts are highly athletic disciplines. Approaching them as both a creative practice and sport opens up new avenues for growth.
Over the past 20 years there has been a 20% drop in school students playing rugby, and 50% drop in cricket. Sport NZ has indicated they are experiencing a decline of roughy 2% per year.
As traditional sport participation continues to drop (and digital consumption rise), we aim to fill the gap – providing an engaging and accessible pathway towards active lifestyles and community connection, and fighting back against screen addictions and dopamine disfunction.
Adopting aspects of sport will also increase the appeal to groups who otherwise may not be interested in the performing arts, while simultaneously pulling the more creative kids closer towards the athletic aspects.
When defining the culture of this new, hybrid Performing Art / Extreme Sport, we will purposefully exclude the negative aspects of organised sport such as toxic masculinity, hyper-competitivity, high incident of injury, and psychological stress.
Te Ahi Ora has been around in one form or another since early 2014. , This was the year that we started teaching in schools for the first time, when a parent reaching out after we taught her child through one of our free public workshops at a city fair (thank you Dale!).
We honed the programme for the next 6 years, putting in thousands of volunteer hours to iron out the kinks, and finding the best way to deliver our learning pathways. The result is an effective system of progression that is easily accessible, highly engaging and entertaining, and based around learning new skills while simultaneously enhancing community togetherness and wellbeing.
Over the Covid years of 2020-21 we dove deep into our structures and policy, founded a new organisation and brand, and prepared to deliver on a national scale – the birth of Te Ahi Ora.