Fire Element

Oh, the element of fire... action, movement, expression.  Fire is the luminescence that comes from within... it is our own life force.  Fire carries Wood into action... pulling the intentions and visions into manifestation... taking thoughts and making them reality.  Fire also interacts with Water to create the living force of flow and warmth... our blood.

A balanced Fire Element might resemble a hearth fire... full of safety and trust, emanating warmth and comfort, nurturing and sustaining life.  The Fire Element is about finding that personal, individual, unique "home fire" that burns within you.  Fire people tend to be highly intuitive and easily mingle their energy with others... so without good boundaries (Metal Element) it can be difficult to tell your own truth from the ideas you've received from others.  

How do you know your own truth?  When you state your own truth it will make your body feel light and buoyant.  Someone else's truth... particularly if it suppresses an innate truth of yours, will feel heavy in the body... you might feel like hanging your head, looking down, or dropping your shoulders forward if the truth belongs to someone else.  These are subtle feelings, and require us to really listen deeply to our bodies and our inner Fire.  The body is constantly giving you information... at a whisper.  The world is often moving loudly and rapidly, making it hard for us to hear the voice that comes from within.  To stay in balance, fire energy requires us to periodically slow down, listen deeply, and care for ourselves with compassion and self-love.  These actions of recovery and contemplation are not valued in our instant-gratification culture... but necessary to keep our Fire Element in balance.

I said earlier that I'd tell you a story about me... related to my challenging elements, Fire and Metal, as they came up.  Well... the energetic pathways that are associated with the Fire Element are heart, small intestine, circulation/sex, and triple warmer.  They all stand for some aspect of the Fire Element... heart is love, primarily self-love, I think.  Small intestine is what we are willing to release, and it often holds the secrets that we believe to be true about ourselves, but are ashamed to admit.  Circulation/sex is about interactions with others, it is full of the beliefs we have about our place in the world.  And, last, triple warmer holds our sense of trust, in others and in ourselves.  I can tell you that I've worked extensively with each of these meridians... and it all came down to a sense of honoring my own truth.  I had to be willing to define myself... not only by rejecting what others erroneously thought about me... but to embrace and fully step into what is true for me.  The hardest part has been sharing that with people.  For years as I studied the healing art of Bioenergy Balancing I worried that my friends, used to me living from my academic Conservation Biology background, might think I'd lost my mind... working in alternative healing.  But it's my truth... it's what I do... it's what feels in alignment with my inner luminescence... my hearth fire.  My dad, a classical physician, believes it's all hooey... and that has become OK for me.  I sense his disappointment that I didn't finish my PhD in Forestry... and it floods me with all of the other disappointments I've caused him.  And yet, those belong to him, not to me.  Maybe it's true for all people... but I attribute it to my Fire... I just HAVE to be who I am.  I don't have any other way of living a meaningful life.