Gloria Haumea King
Interviewed by Ingrid Melia Stadtler-Pree
Big Island of Hawaii, July 27th, 2019
Ingrid: Welcome Gloria and thank you so much for your invitation into your beautiful home! It’s very special to me–thank you!
Gloria: You are very welcome, Mahalo!
Ingrid: Serge calls you “angel” for a reason—you are his beloved wife, his partner and best friend. Together you have celebrated your 64th year of friendship and will celebrate your 58th wedding anniversary in September.
You have supported and joined Serge in all his endeavors.
So, may I ask you, Gloria: How was and is life with Serge?
Gloria: Awesome! What else could you have when you live with a saint? It’s like living with a saint! He never complains about anything! He is very easy to live with and he’s also fun. And he is also a walking „book of knowledge“. If you have any questions about anything, he always has the answer!
Ingrid: Very inspiring, you know, for new things...
Gloria: That makes a great relationship.
Ingrid: And you have lived with him and your three sons on the U.S. mainland, in Africa for 7 years and then back in Hawai'i...so, when you look back, you know, what...
Gloria: ...great life! It’s been a great life.
Ingrid: Before, I said to Serge, within the timespan or the period we know each other, he hasn’t changed a bit, and so do you, you know. It’s really, I think a lot in that HUNA philosophy and the Aloha spirit that helps you feel young and energetic all the time!
Gloria: Yeah, and we were always good friends when we were younger, when we met, we were really good friends and always had a fun time together and so it continues as we started out that way.
Ingrid: Beautiful! In addition to being an Alaka’i and a board member of HUNA International, you have a degree in Dietetics, and nowadays, you know, with so much different approaches on how to live and eat healthy—what’s your „secret recipe“ to such a long and healthy life?
Gloria: Enjoy what you eat! It’s not so much about being totally vegan or vegetarian or eating meat and fish and so forth. It’s a combination and when you eat it, you have to, kind of, bless it and think of it as good and it will always be good, now matter what you have available. So it’s having a variety of everything.
Ingrid: And maybe not fuss to much about it, but enjoy it and appreciate it.
Gloria: Right. Yeah, I mean we’ve been on every kind of diets: we’ve been on American Diet, we were on „all raw“ diet, we were on Pritikin Diet, Atkins Diet and...we’ve done many kinds of diets because of my field with human patients I wouldn’t put anybody on a diet unless I knew myself what it was like. So I’ve been on Slim Fast, I’ve been on Egg & Shakes, you know, trying various things and Serge has always been my pilot student, so he’d really been very nice–he never complained about my cooking, that’s probably why we have such a good relationship!
Ingrid: But in the end, trying those different diets, what’s then the outcome for you?
Gloria: They all work!
Ingrid: They work?
Gloria: They all work. Some are more fun than others. Pritikin Diet was a very interesting diet. We’ve been on it for many years because I worked at the Pritikin Longevity Center, I was a director of the nutrition program there; it’s very high carb, low fat, low cholesterol, no sugar, no fat, no salt, „no says“: there wasn’t a lot of choice of other foods. The food industry had not caught up into making those kind of things. So you had to be very creative... that one–we ate so many carbs–oh my goodness! And then from there we went on Atkins, which was a complete change: it was so fun, I got to eat a whole egg with an egg yolk and for 18 years of no whole eggs...
Ingrid: Wow, so interesting!
Gloria: ...and nothing happened! Our cholesterol levels went down–it was very eye-opening! So, eggs are really not harmful.
Ingrid: Yeah, absolutely. I think, that’s what I do, I just eat what I like and I’m good. And we eat a lot of carbs in Austria (we have all the sweet stuff there and you don’t see really big people, so I think...
Ingrid: But you walk a lot, and you ride bikes..
Ingrid: Yes, we move a lot...
Gloria: In America everybody drives... so weight is a concern, it’s a big concern.
Ingrid: So it’s again about the balance of your body...
Gloria: Exercise! Exercise is very important.
Ingrid: Yes. So if you think of your life in particular and family life in general: What do you consider the most important and helpful Huna approaches or techniques—for yourself and especially for families?
Gloria: Probably EWOP. Do you know EWOP?
Ingrid: I know it, but can you explain it for our audience please?
Gloria: You have to trust, that everything is working out perfectly but maybe differently and it’ll be ok, if you trust. And sometimes it doesn’t work out quite the way you want, so you have to change your rules. And if you can be flexible enough to change your rules about expectations or certain things, life is way more fun and you do things you normally might not do and I mean, HUNA is the way of the adventurer, it’s real fun to have adventures and to go adventuring–every day–it is an adventure! And you have to enjoy it!
Ingrid: Mhm, and maybe especially in raising three boys, what was your Huna approach that helped you deal with growing children, who were maybe all over the place, because sometimes, you know, the criticizing gets easy, so...
Gloria: If you don’t get into criticism, things work really well and sometimes Serge and I we were talking: „Oh my god, we shouldn’t have taught them how to do HUNA, they’re using it on us! You know...like, one time, Pierre wanted Serge to go and get a car because he wanted him to buy the car, and–oh boy–and Serge would say: No, I’m not buying you the car and then they went and looked at the car and came home and then Pierre, of course, had this car. Because they knew how to hold a focus so they would manifest stuff, too! So they could use it on us, but it was all good, you know.
Ingrid: Beautiful. And I think the one thing—especially in the Aloha spirit, you know—not criticising yourself and others, because it just, you know...sometimes you think you need it, to change their behavior but, for example: a child would do something you didn’t like, how would you deal with that, in the HUNA spirit.
Gloria: Depending on what it was, I handed it over to Serge! (laughs)
Ingrid: (laughs) That’s good!
Gloria: You (Serge) handle that!
Ingrid: So if he was not at home...
Gloria: We got pretty good kids, we were very lucky, they were good kids, you know. They didn’t fight a lot or anything like that. And we didn’t criticize them, we gave them space and we had some strange rules– a couple of them like: „You can’t have any Coca Cola, we will not have any Coca Cola in this house, but if you wanna have a beer, you can have beer“, because beer is very nutritious.
Ingrid: (laughs) It’s better than Coca Cola!
Gloria: Yeah, it is, it’s very good.
Ingrid: So, again, as a mom and being introduced into Huna later on, what do you think, we in our families could do to really enhance our family life?
Gloria: Well, I think using Aloha is probably the most important thing—to have love among the members of the family—and not be super-critical and to teach and guide. Harmony is a keyword, you want harmony in your home and you want harmony among each person. We have to respect them as different, we have to respect that they might not always do what we expect them to do, but you sometimes have to change your rules to accommodate their beliefs and actions and so forth. Then hopefully you have a very harmonious home and if you have fun together, do things together...whereas today...we didn’t have Huna so much in those days. It was just new, it was just sort of coming, coming out and it wasn’t really understood very well. It was kind of like a myths in the interim, but we didn’t really know what it was, but it was something, and it’s like the power of positive thinking. And if you have positive expectations, you will have positive things in your life and that’s really what Aloha is about.
Ingrid: Thank you so much, Gloria, for all your wisdom and Mahalo again for being able to do this interview with you in your home, thank you and Aloha!
Gloria: Thank you, Aloha!