The Sacred Ritual of Sitting by Fire Has Much to Teach Us
Apply the ancient secret of fireside moments to modern life for healing and restoration
What is it that draws us to a campfire? Why do we feel so relaxed and mesmerized by those dancing flames?
Fire offers mankind comfort because it gave us light, heat, and protection for thousands of years. It also offered something that we rarely give ourselves anymore: relaxation at the end of the day.
“Fire made the darkness bearable and helped us feel secure and safe.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
Sitting by the fire is an invitation to be still
We’ve moved from fire-sitting as a necessity to a luxury we only experience on an occasional ski or camping trip.
We now have instant light, as much as we need or want, with the flip of a switch.
That invention has added busyness to our already full lives, filling our waking hours with more activity, more noise, more work, more doing, more shoulds, and more stress.
Before electricity, there was a natural shift that all mankind heeded — the shift from doing to being. That built-in time of the day where we naturally let go of the day’s activities and settled into a…