A return to Earth: Making the shift from head to heart-based living

living from the heart. So, because of the overuse, it does sometimes watered down the importance and the true meaning behind these, these concepts. But I really hope to give you a different perspective on that today. And we're going to be talking about shifting to the heart in a very earthy, real

practical ways. So I'm going to be giving you three tools that you can use in your life starting immediately, that can really help you to come back down to earth, incorporate both based tarpaper space practices into your daily routine, and then see for yourself how things shift or don't. So the spoiler alert is that we're not going to be talking about being kind, kindness, altruism, unconditional love. This is a different take on living from the heart. So I hope

you do enjoy. So what are we going to be talking about today? Well, in Episode One, I spoke a lot around how in separating ourselves are from nature and from the web of life, and stemming hugely from our misconception that we are all separate. And we've been wandering around in duality for garden, he knows how long, and this has caused us to become essentially trapped in this

conceptual thinking mind. So in other words, instead of actively living our lives, we are thinking about living our lives. And therefore, it's, we're not truly engaged in moment to moment, energetic living, but really this conceptual head based idea of living. Now I'm not going to go into all the details, I did already cover some of the potential reasons for the separation and duality in Episode One. Those, of course, just be my own understandings based on a lot of the work and experiences that

I've had personally. But the overall theme of that is that if you're looking to improve your relationships with yourself with other people, members of your personal tribe, with other species, and with just in general with, with your living world, then we can embark on this very deep inner connection journey where we look to connect within ourselves. And that inner connection really drives the feeling or the experience of

outer connection. So in this episode, we're going to assume that we have a desire or a wall, or have made a choice to reconnect. And remember, and even the word Remember, it is it's re which means again, and member and member or member ing, is talks exactly to the experience of joining rejoining something member is a part of something, it's, it's being part of a tribe, it's being part of a broader ecology and remembering is why quite literally, they in the word, are taking our place

in the web of life. And when we really start to see the world in this very symbolic archetype or mythical, mythical sense, we can actually see these clues all around us. And even with that example, in the word, remembering these things come up in so many scenarios, and it's quite astounding when you start to view the world in this

different way. I was having coffee with a friend last week, and she said to me, you know, she gets all these concepts and she understands why and she really wants to, you know, look at look at her balancing her inner energies and, and elements and so forth. But how does she actually do it on a day to day level? There's a lot of, there's a lot of talk around this.

There's a lot of books explaining the origins, the why but but not so much around the the how, and I think that this is exactly part of the issue is that we living and we relating to everything, so intellectually, and therefore, it's when we are thinking of things so logically and analytically. Sometimes we have to take a little bit of a leap of faith and try something different. Without perhaps knowing exactly where it's gonna

take us. And then a little later on, we can look back and assess and see what works for us and, and what doesn't. So before we jump into the three tools, I thought it would be good to give a bit of a primer around, what are we talking about today? And what what aren't we talking about today. So what we are talking about, is finding an inner connection within our heart. So in the shift from head to heart, there's an energetic connection that we can remember and feel once again within ourselves.

And the key point to remember is that this is our natural state, there's nothing nothing that's strange or unusual, or something to be afraid of. It's nothing special that only certain very gifted people or the Chosen Few or, you know, it's something that is inherent in all human experience. And someone else I was recently speaking to, he was telling me about a, an intense experience he had had in a Christian prayer group that he

was part of. And he said that he got this very strong feeling within his heart and this feeling of being filled with this energy and love. And he described it to me as supernatural, he said, it was a

supernatural feeling. And it reminded me of something that I once heard and a breytenbach, who is the absolutely wonderful animal communicator, interspecies communicator, in who actually does live here in Cape Town, saying is that these feelings, and this ability, or this connection is not supernatural, it's actually super natural. And I really love that. And, you know, this is the thing we, we, we living in this very domesticated detached way.

And therefore, when we do have these experiences, we believe it must be something from above, but it must come from a power source outside of ourselves. And in this way, we actually diminish our own inner power and energy. The next point I want to make is that this is a balanced energetic state. So we're not talking about a concept, we're not talking about ideas that we need to prove. It's not based on assumptions. It's quite literally the shift from our

head to our heart. But the point I want to make is that it has to be balanced. So with anything, we can go from completely living in our head to completely living in our heart. And in that way, shift ourselves almost the pendulum swings too far to the other side. Sometimes that does happen when we begin a journey. But ultimately, we want to find balance. So it's the inner

marriage of hidden heart. And we could even phrase this in other terms, we could say it's the inner, it's the balance between loving left brain or right brain, it's the balance between our inner masculine and our inner feminine. So it's, we can look at all these contradictions, to find that meeting point for ourselves. But ultimately balanced really, really is the key path we're

looking for. In Buddhism, it's called the middle away, and the story of Shakyamuni Buddha, but as that he initially went on his journey, and went extreme, and renounced everything and went extreme, and apparently even almost died. And only when he came back and actually realised that he had to take this more balanced approach to spirituality did his true journey of awakening begin. So balance is extremely important

in our journey. And the third point I just wanted to make was that, and I did touch on this before is that this is an inner source of wisdom, and power that's already within us. This this inner awareness, inner wisdom, it's not something when you wake up and feel it, it's not something that's coming to you from a third party. We're not talking about, you know, some religious system that's giving you authority to fill

this. We're not talking about some off planet God, that's debit, you know, that you need to get the blessing of in order to feel this connection. This is your own energetic, right. And it's something that you already have within you, this connection, you just don't remember, you can't feel it. Because you live in conceptually, from our heads. We all do this all the time. So we walking around not feeling our connection, because we so stuck in concepts and incorrect

beliefs. So just remember that this is something that you can do. It's it's an inner power that exists within you. And that really builds up trust. So you need to start your work with trust and a sense of self confidence that You are able to make a shift in your life, you are able to change your inner landscape. And in that way, you hold the keys and you hold. Everything that's needed for your own personal journey, called young spoke a lot around, making the unconscious

conscious. And seeing that as our core purpose almost as humans is to take what we can from the unconscious and to manifest it consciously. And if we look at that, in different words, it's about taking our ignorance of who we are, and transforming it into wisdom into seeing things as they really are, and to seeing who it is that we really are. And another way of perhaps looking at it as saying, we're looking at having an out of body experience and actually coming back into our

bodies. So not just living from the head and concepts, but becoming grounded and and in that way, coming back down to earth and back into our bodies. So but I promise that this episode was about practical tools and how we do this. And so I'm going to share three practical tools, I'll give you the headings, and then we can go into a bit more detail on each of them. So the first tool is what I call back to Earth, it is looking at our outer landscape.

And by working with our outer landscape, we can influence our inner landscape. The second tool is called back to our bodies. And in this tool, we look at working with our energies and our inner landscape. And the third tool is very simple one. And it's just simply how to use your breath, to direct your energy to the heart. So these are pretty simple. You can have fun with them, you can incorporate them as you need. But these are three things that I've worked with extensively and

still continue to work with. And they've made a huge, huge impact in my own life. Okay, so tool number one, were we looking at the outer landscape coming back to Earth, in a way we can look at the earth as a representation of our own body. So if we look at the macrocosm, the earth represents each of us as many Earths essentially many bodies

of earth or matter. And therefore, when we look at the earth in the symbolic way, we can also look at all the elements that comprise the earth, or the other organisms and beings that live on the earth. And we can start to develop a relationship with the outer landscape. Now, of course, spending time in nature is always going to be like the key requirement. And we've touched on this before I did a short episode talk talking about how to actually begin connecting

with nature. And I'd recommend listening to that if you're not so familiar with this work. But before we actually even actively start trying to develop a relationship with Earth, I think that the key principle is a famous saying is, first do no harm. So like anything, if we want to develop a relationship with another person, if we treating them badly, if we poisoning their river systems, if we are not being ethical in our choices, it's unlikely that we're going to develop a very

good relationship at all. So we want to start doing a look and analysis as to how we are treating the Earth and in our actions, and in our homes. So I like to call this doing like a home audit. Going through your home, seeing where you could perhaps use more ethical products, you know, are you using chemical cleaning products that ultimately end up getting washed down the drain and end up in the river ways in the oceans? poisoning other life? Even your cosmetic products? How full of

chemicals are they? How are you able to support more sustainable, produce more organic and locally grown, less plastics, all in all, becoming a lot more of a conscious consumer questioning whether you do need that second pair of shoes, you know, knowing that every single thing is interrelated and interdependent. And therefore, we can have huge impact when we stop when we start being more mindful and making better

choices. So that's the first idea is first do no harm and do a home audit and see within your personal space in your activities and hobbies. Where it would be possible for you to lighten your impact on the earth Of course none of us can be perfect and the nature of the world that we live in, you know we we'd still do have to engage in certain activities travelled from time to time. and so forth. So I'm not suggesting that we

become perfect. But it's just, it's a intention, and an attitude of trying to lighten our load on the earth, especially in these times when things are pretty rough out here for, for most other species, and even for the human species, of course. So that's the first point. And then as you start to go out and spend more time in nature, you want to start to observe and start to learn from what the natural world can tell

you. So one thing that becomes pretty clear is that the earth goes through these different cycles in different seasons. And it's obvious in our everyday life, for example, 50% of our day, pretty much is in the dark, 50% of our days, is in the light, of course, that changes as the seasons change. But we have dark circles, and we have

light cycles. And as modern humans, he's so attached to the light, you know, everything is about the life, we want to live in the light, people call themselves light workers. Everything is about, you know, embracing the last but actually, darkness is half of our experience as human beings on this planet, and our sleep states and being, you know, in the darker side of life, which means going into our own unconscious minds as much as we

can. bringing forward learning from our unconscious parts of ourselves through things like meditation, journaling, doing the deep work, really is part of that experience of dark and light. Of course, we have the seasons too. So we have the cold half of the year. And we have the warm half of the match, like the light, most people are addicted to summer, there's this thing of Chasing the Sun wanting to be in summer. But actually, the winter months are also half

of the experience. And you know, fertility and conception often happens in winter. So a lot of species will, will become fertile in the winter months, so that the young are born in the summer periods, even plants, a lot of seeds will germinate in the dark, they germinate deep down in the cold, frozen dark earth. And you know, only some time later you start to see the new shoots in the early spring. So winter, and the colder months are also part of

our experience. And even if we look at our human cycle, or human life cycle, you know, the winter years are often the older part of our life. And we don't have a lot of regard necessarily in our societies, for all people we see all people is inconvenient, we happy to put them in a home, oh, well, if all the old people get COVID and die doesn't really matter, because they're gonna die anyway, you know, I'm just talking about attitudes we've heard and heard

over the last year. But actually, all seasons of our life are equally as important a child should be cherished as much as an old person, and vice versa. So it's it's learning and seeing how the earth what the earth has to teach us. And so in developing this relationship, it's very, very important to listen. But we're not listening with our heads, we're not listening. analytically, we're listening with our hearts. And we're starting to see things in

a more symbolic way. So we can be creative, because it's not this linear analytical approach. We can be as creative as we want in developing this relationship. And another tool that I use so the first being the the the home audit and lightening your load on the planet, the second one is to quite literally go outside and to have an active relationship with the earth. So go outside and say good morning to the world in the morning, talk to the flowers, maybe Sing to the birds, instead of letting

them sing to you. Go and do a dance under a tree, give, give something of yourself back to the earth, do whatever it is that you find joy it and give that back to the earth. There was a wonderful project I came across a few years ago, I can't actually remember its name

anymore, unfortunately. But it was an international movement and what they encouraged people was to go to the world's most polluted desolate, you know, really, really places that have been hit the hardest by pollution and man and all of you know, just landscapes that have been torn up and life life really not flourishing. And they ask these groups of people to go to these places and to really,

really sing that Earth. Back to Laugh, there's this concept, it is a very, I think it's a Native American concept to a lot of Aboriginal cultures have this idea of singing the earth back to life. And it was a really beautiful project, people took photos of themselves doing this standing on the beaches, singing to the whales, doing dances, making beautiful men dollars on the earth. And I just loved that. And I think that we can all incorporate stuff like that

into our everyday lives. And I think kids would really love this too, you know, it's a wonderful activity to invite your children to come up with their own creative ideas on how to communicate with the earth, and how to give something back without any expectation of anything in return. So this is this is sort of the first tool, which is developing the relationship with the earth and the outer landscape. And one thing I didn't mention is that we can also learn a lot from the

outer elements. So everything in the world is made up of five elements. So we've got the space element, which is essentially the space in which the earth and everything is contained. We've got earth elements, which is the the matter of physical matter that we see, we've got the water element, which as we know, in our particular planet, we've got an abundance of the water element, we have the fire element, which sometimes fire element is present as actual

fire. But sometimes we see fire element present as the absence of fire. So it can also be in very cold climates. And then we have the A or the wind element, which is the a of course that we breathe, but also the winds and how they move the weather patterns around the world. Living in Cape Town, it's very windy, so people here have a lot of experience and relationship with the earth in the wind element, that's not always good, but therefore a brilliant

element to practice with. So you can start to match like developing the relationship with with the earth in general, you can start to work with developing a relationship with each of these external elements. So go for a swim in the ocean, or go arrested a river, go lie on the earth, you know, go and be in the wind and allow it to blow through you and not to feel annoyed, try to detach from the stories to be told. And, you know, in this way, we can start to work with with all the

different elements. So the next tool now is the tool of coming back into our bodies, and working on the inner lands. So the relationship with our body is a huge one. And I will do a separate session with this, and an interview with a body work practitioner. But for today, what we want to start thinking about is really, what is our attitude towards our body? Are we stuck in the concept that our mind and our intellectual ability is more important than our body? Do we listen to our

body as a source of wisdom. And, you know, it's important to remember that our body isn't even just our own body, it includes many millions, or I believe it's billions, perhaps trillions of other organisms, bacterias and all sorts of little bugs that live in our

skin. It's quite incredible. I read a very interesting article recently that said that, despite the fact that, you know, humans, it may be possible, in a very controlled way for humans to say live on Mars One day, we wouldn't be able to live more than two weeks on Mars, because we wouldn't have the broader biosphere and the environment that would support the life of all the organisms in our body. And without all these organisms in the body thriving, we actually cannot live. It's quite

an astounding fact. So we look at our bodies, we look at ourselves thinking it's just us, but actually, there's so much life right now, in our body supporting us that, you know, we're not even just one thing. And it's quite, quite amazing that thought, but, you know, how do we treat our bodies? Do we wake up in the morning and hop on to our cell phones and not even think about perhaps moving or stretching or doing anything that our body

might need? Or if you look at dogs, I've got two beautiful dogs and the first thing your dog does in the morning, when they wake up is they do their stretches. Even after a nap. They get up and they do the stretches. And not just dogs. All animals do this. And it's so interesting as humans we've completely overwritten this with with our mind So we wake up we look at, look at our phones, we

have a coffee. And unless we have a, you know, specific exercise day where we're going to jump gym or run or something, we quite literally, you know, go sit behind our desks or get into our car. And we have this fairly sedentary day, and we already disconnected and not listening to our body. So a really easy way is to start a simple morning practice of waking up listening to what your body's telling you, does it need a stretch in a particular way?

Does it need to move a bit more vigorously, sometimes putting on a really fun dance song. And dancing is a great way to get the juices flowing, does your body feel like it needs a good breakfast and on a particular morning, maybe not, maybe it just needs a lot of water. So listening to your body's needs, and the feelings and the sensations in your body is

really important. Now, understand that for many of us, we do store pain in our bodies we've got, we've got ill health, sometimes we've got pain, we've got painful memories that are lodged and stored in our body. And therefore, we've chosen to disconnect from our body in a way of not wanting to face our pain. And if this is something you experience, then go very

gently with yourself. And if you're not finding yourself able to go into a particular area of your body, you're not wanting to do it alone, then I'd really recommend finding a bodywork practitioner, somebody that they can work with you work with your physical body, and go through the journey with you. So that you are able to start to listen to the wisdom that your body is trying to tell you in in its points of seeming stuckness or pain. So our body has got this

built in innate awareness. And when we start to be able to tap into that, it's quite amazing that we can develop a relationship with our own bodies, it's quite a crazy concept to think we would actually need to develop a relationship with our parties. But but there is this element at at at first, it even seems a bit

fictitious. So to think of your body as an external thing to you, or an object, but we The more we started developer relationship, the more we started to close that gap between subject and object and actually allow that in the marriage we were speaking about before, I've hidden heart to happen. Now, another point to remember is that your body comprises energy. So everything, in fact, comprises energy, the entire universe, the earth, the every single thing, from a tree to a rock, to your

body, to a glass of water. Every single thing comprises different combinations and vibration of energy. And we could look at this in a scientific way, as you know, we've got atoms that have got different particles vibrating around the central nucleus. And therefore atoms make up the basis of all of our

cells in our bodies. But we look at if we look to the eastern teachings, our Vedic traditions, and even Chinese medicine, they call this the prana in the body or the CI, in Tibetan, it's called the lung which translates to wind, which is quite interesting. We'll touch on that in a minute. So really, we want to learn to start feeling and then developing a relationship with this energy in our body. But with this small caveat, and that is we don't want the energy to

run wild. So again, it's about finding that that point of balance. Now, because everything in our body is energy, and every single thing in our entire universe is energy, our thoughts and our mind are also energy. It's just a different type of energy. It's a very subtle form of energy and something we can't easily see or grasp or hold on to. And therefore when our thoughts and our mind is racing, this means that our energy is racing. And this is actually what causes an

energetic disturbance. So if you look at the branch of energy medicine, it's they always say our emotions, and our thoughts have a direct impact on our bodies and our health. And if we look at it from an energetic perspective, the more disturbed our inner energy is our inner prana is it's going to have a physical manifestation in the physical energy within the body. So we want to try and calm down our racing thoughts in mind and, you know, make our inner landscape as harmonious and

still as possible. And for that we can use, you know, the ancient tools of meditation and mindfulness, which the very first step is to even become aware of your racing mind in the first place. This morning for some reason, I'm not sure why I woke up. So Monday morning, I woke up and my mind was racing, I'd had a lot of very vivid dreams through the night. And my mind was absolutely racing on 10

different topics at once. And although sometimes we get so attached to those stories, and they can be quite juicy and entertaining, when we follow them, I had to consciously force my mind back to a point of stillness, and to not allow that racing mind to continue. And it's just sometimes like that, you know, it's part of part of how the mind operates, we're gonna have days where we have a very active racing mind, you'll have days where we feel a lot Carmen Stiller. So don't label

yourself as good or bad. There's no right or wrong. It's just simply about noticing how the mind is racing. And then trying to bring balance to the body and the mind. So with meditation, we attempt to notice the thoughts. And in that way, and by not attaching to them, they do, the power over us subsides. And in that way, the body relaxes. But sometimes with yoga, actual physical yoga, the Yogi's work

the opposite way. So they work with moving the body first, and doing the various poses, and then they do pranayama, which is the breathing techniques. And then after that, they settle into meditation, with the hope that moving the body in the physical energy, and letting it then relax at the end of yoga, when you do the final resting pose, will help ease you into meditation. And that definitely

does work. Although, you know, our modern yoga classes that we go to which are more focused on exercise, the meditation at the end, is not even normally present at all. So I'm not talking about Shavasana, the final resting pose, but actually in the proper yoga practice, you would do your resting, you would do your breathing techniques, and then you would settle into a

meditation. So if you can, if you do a home yoga practice, or you do go to yoga, perhaps try and incorporate your own meditation at the end if it's not led by the instructor and just see how the, how easier or if it does change your experience of going into meditation. Now, the main tool I want to talk about in this episode is how we

can use the inner elements. So we spoke about the art elements fire a water, space and Earth, but in a symbolic way, because of the macrocosm and the microcosm to the external, and the internal numbers, we have the same elements within us. So of course, we've got these elements physically, we've got physically got water in our bodies, we breathe a, we have the fire, which is the digestive system and the metabolism, we've got the earth element in our

flesh and bones. And, of course, space is present in every single atom atoms are 99.999% empty space to actually which is a really crazy thought, we are mostly empty space, but we perceive and feel the vibration in a more physical sense. So when we are looking to work with our inner elements, there is an aspect of looking after the health of your body in the the elements of the actual physical

body. And I know that our Vedic traditions and Chinese medicine, and some other alternative Western medicine, look at how to balance the elements in the body. And it can be as simple as incorporating more fresh, clean water into a diet, eating more earthy foods such as things like mushrooms and root vegetables, learning to breathe better, you know, amping up your digestion, your digestive fire, your passion, things like that. So there are ways you can work with

physical body. And if you're interested in in the second highly recommend the book by Caroline, Myss, Myss and called Anatomy of the Spirit'. It's a older book, but absolutely brilliant and she talks about all the energy centres in the bodies around rounding the chakras, and then she talks about, you know, the symbolic aspects of the body but also the physical connection and some of the diseases that you might see manifests around certain energy signatures, or what's also called chakras in

the body. So I can highly recommend that book anatomy of the Spirit. So when we working with the inner elements, we can look at ourself as symbolically comprising the elements. And I'll do separate episodes detailing each element. Because this is so important, and vital to absolutely everything in our life it deserves, there's a lot to say on each element, and how we will work with would work with them on all these different layers. But what's helpful to start doing is to start looking

at where elements are today. And this is actually pretty easy based on again, the language the way we language it in the English language. I'm speaking from the English language, so I'm not as sure about the other languages. But for example, we would speak about feeling burnt out. Now what is burnout, burnout is quite literally, over supply or over abundance of the fire element, not enough water element qualifier, and a burnt

out earth elements. So they're ready, you can point to the three elements that you would have to look at, to heal or

bring balance to burnout. We talk about things like depression, people say that they feel like they drowning, you might feel like you know, you're wading through mud or stuck in the mud, you might feel like you can't breathe, all of these things are linked to the elements element water element being stuck in the mud is having too much water and not enough Earth and creating this, this you know very very sludgy situation that you find

yourself in. In addition to looking at the language that you use to describe yourself or your present experience, another really great thing to do is to do an inner element audit, loving these audits today. And what you will do with this is on a piece of paper, kind of just jot down the five elements. And then I'll give you now an overview of what each element

comprises. So you might want to just take a few notes, and then sort of just see where you sit in different places within your life and start to see how that element comes up for you. So So look at each element from physical, emotional, maybe your career, look at it, you nervous in terms of relationships, how it comes up, maybe how other people in your life present themselves in terms of which elements they are dominant in or

perhaps very balanced in. And then even in terms of your spiritual path, you can look at the elements through all of those different lenses. So the element we always begin with is the earth element. And the keywords for the earth element, it's it's really around grounding. So grounding, a sense of stability, a sense of connection, a connection to all

life. And when our earth elements imbalanced, it might show up as if we've got too much earth element, we might be quite rigid and stubborn, so inflexible, and not wanting to look at other people's views, we might also be very much quite territorial and see ourselves as you know, sort of our own separate entity. So it's definitely that feeling of being separate and apart from other people.

So that's if we've got that's an imbalance in one direction, if we don't have enough of the earth element, it can show up in feeling you know, on shaky ground, so feel like we don't have a firm footing within our life, feeling, perhaps a little unstable, unsure of ourself lacking self confidence, and this feeling of not having an A clear identity. So just being quite blown around and not not having a sense of a place our particular place on the earth. The next element we can we look

at is the water element. And the water element when it's imbalances all about going with the flow. Water is an incredible transmitter of information we know that water, by its nature can carry lots of information within its like molecular structure. So water it's about us being you know, in the flow of life and feeling very intuitive and in touch with our inner message our life's messages. And when waters out of balance, if we have an abundance of water is also very connected

to our emotional body. And when waters, we've got too much water, we can be very emotional. So fairly emotional, sorry, emotionally unstable. And this is where you know, little things can happen that really, we have maybe an a very large reaction to and so forth that sometimes we can then see that the very water you we've got, we've got an abundance of the water element, water element in abundance can also be very

destructive. So we know that when water is raging, so if we particularly emotional in particular, water can be very destructive, it can tear down structures, it can be not always peaceful, calm force, another sorry, another element. Another aspect of balance water, I forgot to mention is, water has this ability to be a marine. And a water is very common stable. It just simply reflects and it can show, it reflects life. As life happens, it reflects life

back at itself. So there's quite a lot, it goes very deep into this this concept of mirror like wisdom. But we'll touch on that in more detail. When we do the the water element in depth, excuse the pun. And when we don't have enough water in our life. We can be dry, we can lack compassion, we can lack empathy. So you may have all the knowledge in the world but where you lack water, and feeling and intuition, it comes without the

compassion aspect. So what is you know, there's you can be wise, but if you lacking water, you're lacking that softer side and compassion. So we want to try and then bring that element back back to invite some more of that feeling into our experience. The the next element we will look at is fire. And fire is around our creativity. So fires needed for us to change something from one form into

another form. So actually, if we look at, for instance, the relationship between fire and water, we need for water to change form, say from liquid, or ice to liquid or liquid to gas, there's an aspect of heating, we need the fire, the heating, to transform, and that fire does that in our bodies through our metabolism. But the alpha every aspect of our personality is our creativity and our beliefs, ability to be an alchemist in

our life. So to change, lead into gold to shift and constantly transform our situations. When we have an abundance of fire, it can manifest as extreme extreme ambition being very, very goal driven at all costs, it can come across as anger. And so almost being too fiery, can be expressed definitely in negative way as well. Or if we have not enough fire, we can be lacking passion, lacking motivation to create. And the next element is the element, the element is all

about balance. So if we think about breathing, we can't just breathe out all the time. We have to breathe in an art. And the element is always represented at the heart. And that's because we need to give and to receive love. But it speaks exactly to the human experience of everything being connected. And it's it's not just about me, and what can I give or Arctic. But in fact, it's about this perfect harmony and balance within absolutely everything. And the elements are so connected to our mental

activity. Now we all know that when our thoughts are racing, just like very, very, very strong Gale Force wind, it's almost impossible to calm those winds down and earlier you might remember I mentioned that. So when we talk about energy, how some of the words of energy are ci or prana. In Tibetan, the word for they use for the energy is long and long actually directly translates as wind. And this is very, very interesting because and it's not not just

two incidents. It's because it's this inner a when our inner element is moving you know sort of out of Control, for lack of a better word, our energy can be very, very scattered. So we constantly trying to balance our energy a, and we do that through balancing our mind. So we use tools such as meditation, mindfulness, etc, to bring balance to our mental state, so that we not just where we've got an abundance of air, we just completely letting the

mind run away from us. Or if we don't have enough, a, we are unable to create change, because we are unable to use the mind and our thoughts in a positive way to think through creative problem solving, and strategies. So he has a very, very interesting element. And again, it's good when we look at all of these elements to think about their relationship with with the

elements that precede them. So for example, what do we know, fire nuts, fire needs in order to book burn, but when we've got over too much air, when they when there's gale force winds it cause it fans the fire, and it can cause the fire to rage, and cause a lot of distractions. So there's a huge amount of, of interdependence between all of these elements. The last element is the element of space, which is asking yourself the questions

do I create space in my life? Or do I fill up everything in my life? Do I make space for my personal growth, and my spiritual development, or am I just so caught up in the doing that I'm not actually ever standing back and taking a look at my life, so space is very much around the gaps and not opportunities that exist between every breath between every day between falling asleep and waking up. In other words, for that, as a body, it's a gap or an opportunity to stand back and

to space. And that's one way we can work with the space element. So as I say, this is just very high level. And we'll go into a little bit more detail. But with the element audit, you will start to, you know, be as creative as you want, put all the elements down on a piece of paper, and just go through and think about how they show up in your life. And I think you'll be quite surprised when I first started doing this a long time ago, must be over 10 years

ago. Most the elements for me that were most obvious with an element and fire element. And that was very, very connected to where I was at that phase of my life and had to consciously then work with creating more Earth and more water in order to support that very strong fire element. And at the same time, look at strategies and tools to perhaps slow down my racing mind to curtail this, this drive and

ambition and so forth. Because often actually, when we do these things, we start to see why we ask the question why? Why am I ambitious? Why am I chasing? Why am I you know, constantly moving and filling up my space. And it goes down to a lot of, you know, sort of inner fears and issues that we can then look at and work with. So this this type of elemental assessment in our life

is really interesting. And I've used this as a guiding tool over the past 10 years, I do it constantly and I can instantly know where I am in a particular day around perhaps which aspect of which element in an element slightly imbalanced. And, and what I need to do to bring a bit more balance and harmony internally. So that's that for tool number two, which is working with it in a landscape. And now the last one is just really something very simple. I

wanted to share too close. And this is truly a very quick, energetic way to bring shift our energy from head to heart. And that is to simply use your breath and conscious awareness to do it. So what I mean by that is if right now, you could even just press pause and think about this for a moment. But we perceive our world because we perceive our world through our sense organs, which just coincidentally happened to be

all on our head. Okay, so we we personally look through our eyes, we smell the taste, we're here with us the brain to think because everything is very head based. We do tend to associate

our awareness with our head. And therefore we can think that our awareness must be our brain but When we wanted to explore how awareness cannot just be the brain, but incorporate the body to, we can actually use the breath and our awareness to shift that sort of energetic intensity that is present within the head, down into the body, or the to the heart or even lower

down to the get. But what you will do for this is when you how I do it in any event, and I'm sure there's multiple ways of doing this, but when you notice that the feeling of intensity or energy is concentrated in the head, I breathe down out and act with the outbreath. Or try to shift the awareness or the energetic feeling that's concentrated in the head down to the heart. And it's just as

simple as that. And by doing that over and over and over again, you start to start to feel the energy a little bit more throughout my entire physical body. If you have a little longer, then you can do this practice by visualising yourself like a tree. And what you want to do is you're going to breathe down and you're going to feel your energy moving down like the tree takes in oxygen and sun. Or I think, actually sorry, cheese taken carbon dioxide, and sunlight, you're

going to breathe that down. So down through your body, imagine that like the trunk, and you're going to push the energy out through the feet like roots into the earth. And then on the in breath, you're going to pull the energy like a tree would pull water nutrients from the earth, you're going to pull it up through your body, and you're going to release that through the the top of the head, like you were releasing it, like a

tree which release oxygen. And you can do this to a breathing, you know, for a couple of minutes. And it's a wonderful way to start feeling how your body really becomes alive, you can, you can start to consciously connect with the energy and consciously connect with the body. And that's what we're looking to. And we're looking to make the shift from living from the head to the

heart. But really this quick tool of simply breathing down and feeling that energy that's always normally concentrated in the head moving into the body is really is a game changer. It's simple, you can do it at any time. And when you get used to doing it, I mean, I do it in all scenarios, I can do it when I'm sitting on a client work zoom call window driving in the car. And once you do it a bit you your body knows what's coming in, automatically opens and allows this energy to, to really

be felt within the body. So I invite you to give it a try. Let me know how it goes. I'd love to know how it works for other people, not just me, perhaps, perhaps it doesn't really work for you. And I'd love to have that feedback. So, in summary, when we're looking to really heal the separation, this feeling of disconnect, and remember, our place in the universe, what we trying to do is not just shift totally from head or thinking to heart and feeling. But try and find that

in a balance. It really is about balance. And we we can do this through working as we shared with the outer landscape developing a relationship with the earth, working with our inner landscape, developing a relationship with our inner energies and archetypes and then working with the physical energy itself as it comes through our body. I hope you enjoyed the

episode today. And in the coming weeks I'll share a little more around each element and more practical tools on how you can work with them and bring balance sending love, bye for now