Fan Your Fire Element in Yoga with this Seasonal Quiz
Welcome and thanks for reading!
As May wraps up and June begins, the signs of early summer in the northern hemisphere can't be ignored. The days are finally warming up and stretching out, just like our bodies at this time of year. Appropriately, as the heat turns up outside, today's blog officially introduces the Fire element. The ruling element of early summer, we will explore how it influences our yoga practice, mindset, and lifestyle choices this time of year.
The Taoist 5 Elements, also called the 5 Phases, of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water affect us on physical, emotional, and spiritual levels. To recognize ourselves as energetic beings subject to the natural rhythms of growth, expansion, interplay, transformation, and contraction of same elemental energies that empower the world around us, provides insight into how we can more effortlessly connect to, and even direct, this unwavering abundance of energy flow into our daily yoga and our lives. Study of the elements reminds us that everything in nature, including ourselves, is constantly in flux and interconnected. We are not the same season to season, or year over year. We are subject to karmas beyond our own.
Allowing ourselves permission to continuously grow, expand, discover, absorb, release, and contract, will help us let go of that stubborn resistance to change we all harbor, a resistance that brings us so much suffering.
Elemental studies empower our yoga with a deeper level of self-discovery.
(FYI, for a fast review of the Taoist 5 Elements vs. The Ayurvedic 5 Elements, click here.)
Hello, Fire Element!
Read on to discover which attributes are ruled by the Fire element and how they manifest in your personality and yoga practice!
Seasonal Quiz Time!
Are You In Your Element?
The Fire element rules the early summer season. The heart, pericardium, small intestine, and circulation are physical body parts and functions ruled by the Fire element. Emotionally, the Fire element is responsible for unconditional love and joy. On a spiritual level, through the heart chakra, it has the power to energize and guide our choices and actions through the light of love.
How Dominant is the Fire Element in Your Personality?
Five Yes or No Questions for Self-discovery:
Are you outgoing and sociable?
Do you enjoy being the center of attention?
Are you spontaneous and impulsive in your actions, able to make decisions quickly?
Do you have a passionate and intense personality?
Do you have a strong sense of creativity and imagination?
If you answered "yes" to most of these questions, then the Fire element may dominant your nature. Fire Element embodies passion, creativity, and verbal communication. People with a strong and balanced Fire element tend to be lively, outgoing, and expressive.
Does the Fire Element Rule Your Yoga Practice?
Answer These Five Yes or No Questions to Find Out:
Do you feel passionate and inspired when practicing yoga?
Do you enjoy practicing with others in a dynamic and energizing environment?
Do you prefer a faster paced, active, yoga flow over a slower paced yoga sequence?
Do you easily to connect with others in your yoga community?
Would you more often choose a moving meditation over a seated, still meditation?
If you answered "yes" to most of these questions, then the Fire element is a driving force in your yoga practice, resonating with your natural disposition for creative expression, joy, and powers of manifestation.
If you answered "no" to most of these questions, your elemental nature may be more balanced and influenced by other elements, bringing a different energy and focus to your yoga practice. Our journey together here in Asana Insights yoga blog aims to help each of us embrace the diversity of every element within us, discover the unique gifts they provide, and learn practical applications to bring us greater peace, joy and clarity.
Regardless of our dominant elemental nature, all yoga practitioners will experience a Fire phase within the cycle of their practice. It arrives after the newness of a class, posture, studio, or teacher has worn off and the tepid trepidation of being a "beginner" transforms into the excitement of "I can do this!" This cycle occurs over and over throughout a lifetime of yoga pracitce.
Often a favorite phase among yogis, it brings an enthusiasm to the mat that manifests as rapid progress in our postures in a relatively short timeframe. Progress fuels more inspiration, rewarding our time on the mat, and further encouraging us to press forward at high speed.
Whenever we feel that desire to turn up the heat on our practice, we know the Fire element is making itself known and that progress is right around the corner.
Trust this intuition and embrace this feeling when it arrives. Like all flames, eventually the Fire element — along with the excitement, passion, and progress it brings — inevitably dies down. We must fan the flames and bask in the warmth while we can, trusting that doing so will usher in our next phase of growth.
In Conclusion
Understanding where, when, and how elemental energies can either be nourished or starved inside us provides insight in how to maintain physical and emotional wellbeing year round, in body, mind, and soul.
Summer and the Fire element embody manifestation, creativity, and energizes the spirit with love! Like a garden blossoming, preparing to bear fruit, or the spring-born baby animals leaving their nests to forge their own way in the word, now is the season to lead with the heart and step forth fearlessly into the world. Infusing our yoga practice with these energies prepares us to enter the season ready to embrace our passions with a clear the mind, strong body, and guided by our own inner wisdom.
Have a great week! I always appreciate your thoughtful comments and emails.
Namaste,
Lara
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