This is how a relationship with fire can make you a better human
It takes the lyric “turn out the lights and light a candle” to another level.
What’s your relationship with fire? I’m talking beyond the big and little fires you put out in your daily life.
What is your relationship with the element of fire? Ponder that a moment. How much our daily lives can be improved, enriched and enhanced when we make an intentional effort to reconnect with the natural world is often overlooked.
The four elements and the cyclical nature of the Earth are literally resources readily available to us for personal growth, self improvement, deeper self awareness and spiritual fulfillment. But we are conditioned to either look beyond them, naysay them as ‘alternative’ or ‘new age’ methods or disregard them for self help books and online courses about self improvement.
Fire is one of the four elements that offers a powerful experience with self awareness, introspection and soul connection— all the self practices that innately make you better as a human.
I want to share a personal experience with you about how spending time with fire has quite literally changed my life.
Almost every morning after I brush my teeth, shower, moisturize and melt into my breast massage, I flow into my ritual of lighting a candle on my altar.
Now, I’m sure you have probably lit several candles over the course of your life, but have you really BEEN WITH a candle? In a way that transforms the way you breathe, feel and see yourself? That’s a whole different way. This is what my (almost) daily ritual is steeped in.
Fire is magic.
It is the element of illumination and transformation and is deeply powerful because it has the ability to demolish and destroy, but also provide warmth, vision and protection. Fire has a deep effect on the mind; conscious and subconscious.
When spending intentional time with fire, it can induce a trance-like state and shift your brainwaves from beta (thinking/being alert) to alpha (relaxed state) to theta (meditative, intuitive, receptive state). It has a presence and spirit all its own that you can tap into when you spend time with it.
Now knowing all that, it’s no longer hard to understand that fire has so much to show and teach you. If you have the intention to hear and learn, you will.
I was first introduced to flame gazing during my Yoga teacher training back in 2016. It was a practice called Trataka, which is a tantric practice of looking or gazing at a single point, in this case a flame.
We put white lace cloths over our heads, turned out the lights and gazed at the flame. If our eyes watered or we needed to blink, we closed our eyes and envisioned the flame in our minds eye until it felt comfortable to open them again. It was a profound experience…that I never consciously practiced again.
But then….
It intuitively became a real, deep practice for me when I was navigating deep grief with the ending of a relationship in 2020. It was such an emotional time, a lot of it felt unbearable. But one night while crying on the floor, I began to stare at the flame of a candle I had lit.
I starred and starred and starred. I instinctively began breathing deeply and started to notice that it brought me a lot of solace and comfort; even if only momentarily.
Starring at the flame while breathing deeply, began regulating my emotions in those moments. It directed my attention to one point of focus which allowed my nervous system to calm and my parasympathetic nervous system (relaxation response) to turn on.
So I continued to return to that same candle over and over again, night after night. As I continued, I started to speak to the flame, asking it questions and asking if it had anything to show or tell me. And I would wait and listen.
Not even really knowing that I was tapping into the magic of fire and candles. But also remembering the profound experience I had in my teacher training four years prior.
Since then, not only has flame gazing become a big part of ritual and general self care for me, but it has also sparked a deepening of my relationship with fire, candles and how they are an irreplaceable aspect of ritual and how they support creating magic and manifestation in everyday life.
I share this as an offering. That maybe it inspires you to communicate and be with a flame differently. As a ritual of unlocking your subconscious mind, but also as a natural, non harmful, Earth and element connected way to transform and alter your state of being for the betterment of your life from moment to moment, day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year.
Mel The Oracle is a mentor, yogini, voice artist, writer and host of the Full Ass Human Podcast. After initiating a business sabbatical in march 2022, she began to explore a re-dedication to her many passions. She supports her listeners and readers by vulnerably modeling humanness, teaching by living and reminding them to invite all dimensions of themselves to the table.
