I remember mana being talked about in reference to two things; something from the pacific/south east asia that's fairly energetic and floated around a long time ago and the other I remember is someone referencing some sort of nl5 x haze variant, like a5, as mana.
Mana, as a word, gets thrown around in d&d, wow, (insert fantasy rpg here) as a stand in for energy, essence, life force, ect. Used for the "higher level" stuff like healing and magic. I always took the reference of smoking mana as some nerdy reference to that shit; but it looks like theres a Malay or Samoan term that kind of references the same thing.
My best guess is that it's something off an island and is probably more equatorial than not; but I am just guessing. I'm hoping one of the old heads reads this and it knocks something loose as being completely wrong or something that sounds familiar.