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Hello friends,
Welcome back to the ELEMENT SESSIONS. For those of you new here, the Element Sessions are series of slow, seasonal check-ins throughout the year, using as a framework the Five Elements as described in Taoist practices and Chinese Medicine.
The Five Elements (Water, Fire, Metal, Wood & Earth) are all energetic expressions of pure life force. We have all of these five elements within us, and they also vibrate throughout the natural world, they are what makes up life. Each element is at its strongest at a particular time of the year - Earth in Late Summer, Metal in Autumn, Water in Winter, Wood in Spring and Fire in the Summer.
When I’m not writing or mothering I work as a Five Element acupuncturist, and so it felt like a simple natural step to create a series of slow, seasonal explorations of each of these elements, weaving in some creative writing prompts. There is, I feel, great power in exploring each of these aspects of ourselves in the time of year it is at its height.
Last year we explored each of the Elements through a series of podcast conversations, live calls and journalling prompts (links to our WATER session are below, including a wonderful conversation with Easkey Britton). This year, as we continue our exploration, I felt drawn to using sound and the body to tap into the elements a little more.
In this short video on the WATER element and WINTER we:
𖥸 Explore what the qualities of this time of year are
𖥸 Use a simple sound and movement to wake up the Water meridians. In Taoist practice each of the organ pairings for each element have a particular sound associated with them, designed to vibrate at a particular frequency to stimulate them, get them moving, wake them up.
𖥸 Finally, I’d highly recommend also taking a listen to the conversation I had with writer, social ecologist and big wave surfer Easkey Britton about the power of water in our lives. Our fascinating initial conversation can be listened to here:
And you can also listen to this wonderful practice that Easkey shared with us around grief and loss and the holding and healing potential of water:
These are conversations that have stayed with me since I had them over a year ago now, I’d love to hear how they land for you?
Layla x
