Lomilomi is the Hawaiian tradition of healing bodywork, performed with the hands, forearms and, in some styles, sticks or smooth stones, using long, kneading strokes distinct from the more localised pressure point work of several Asian bodywork traditions, and it is inseparable in its traditional form from prayer, practitioners commonly opening and closing a session with pule, spoken invocation, framing the physical work as a spiritual act rather than a purely mechanical treatment of muscle and tissue.
The practice is understood traditionally as working with and through mana, the vital spiritual power or life force central to Hawaiian religious and cultural understanding of the person, and a skilled lomilomi practitioner, a kahuna lomilomi, was traditionally understood to hold both healing knowledge and genuine spiritual authority, the two not separable categories within the traditional Hawaiian framework the way modern secular medicine and religion are generally kept apart. Family lineage transmission has historically been central to lomilomi, with specific styles and techniques passed down within particular Hawaiian families across generations, a transmission pattern that gives the practice, even today, a genuinely diverse range of regional and family specific forms rather than one single standardised technique.