Compassion

The mended heart at the centre of the model reminds us to move with compassion.  Compassion for ourselves is missing in Christian traditions.  The idea of original sin in particular hypnotises us into a deep sense that there is something wrong with us.  So when intense experiences come along and it’s painful, there’s a tendency to assume on a deep unconscious level that we deserve it.  That the pain and suffering is somehow our fault. 

This just isn’t true.  It’s a way of keeping people powerless and under control.  And it perpetuates suffering.  

Jesus – like Buddha and all prophets – was a teacher of love.  Compassion is a fierce but gentle form of love that meets pains and suffering with tenderness and wisdom.  I see compassion as love that seeks to understand and eliminate unnecessary suffering.  

All healing modalities, spiritual practices and religions are really about tapping into a source of love at the centre of our being.  It’s that love that guides recovery from intense experiences. 

Intense Experience – The Storm Element

Life will always have intense experiences.  There will always be death and there will always be illness and there will always be traumatic experiences that take you close to death.  It’s just that in a world so out of balance, intense experiences happen much more than they should. 

So “Storm” is the element that represents these intense experiences (the bolt of lightning at the top).  It’s not bad on its own – it can shake things up and make you look deeper inside.  It’s just that it’s a real challenge to face the storms of life.  There’s this mystical calling for utopia where everything run smoothly and nothing is ever difficult.  But life as a human just isn’t like that.  Having the storm element as a central part of the model reminds us that storms are a part of life and that they can clear away what’s no longer necessary, or blow us into new territory that rich for growth and expansion.

The Core 4 Elements – Earth, Water, Air & Fire

So we’ve got the storm element.  This next part of the model is directly taken from Karla McLaren’s incredible work on emotions.  She argues that we need to have all 4 elements balanced inside us to create a village.  And when there is this level of balance inside, we can do the deeper healing of intense experiences – especially traumatic experiences. 

Those 4 elements correspond to different parts of us:

Earth – the physical body

Water – the emotions

Air – the intellect

Fire – creativity and psychic ability 

In Western society, the air element is dominant at the expense of all the other parts of us.  A common way to handle intense experiences is the allure of fire – the part of us connected to spirit.  But as Karla explains in The Language of Emotions – entering the spiritual world is connecting with fire and if you go in without the support of water and earth, it can lead to more intensity later.  

It’s also how spiritual by-passing can happen.  Spiritual by-passing is where you jump to light and love and joy-chasing at the expense of what you’re really feeling – or you invalidate what someone else is feeling by by-passing the discomfort.  Again it’s that craving for a utopia instead of embracing life as it is.  

Water and Earth 

Water and earth are a deeper invitation from the soul to feel your way through to completion.  The earth element – the physical body carries the remnants of intense experiences.  Your body gets ready for survival in a fight, flight or freeze response.  That response stays stuck in your body until you give it space to flow through.  Animals will shake off that stuck response in the body and carry on but humans have lost touch with that capacity and we let intensity build up in our physical bodies.  That has an impact on how we think and how safe we feel on earth.  Somatic Experiencing and TRE are based on this natural form of healing.  

Water is the emotions.  The emotions – even intense emotions like hatred, rage and shame – have all got a purpose in the psyche.  They all carry messages and they come up to help us solve our problems.  Panic is the emotion that connects with the fight, flight or freeze response.  Panic that comes up when you’re actually safe, could be an indicator that there’s some trapped survival energy in your body.   Learning to listen to emotions and let them bring their lessons is a powerful way to recover from intense experiences. 

The 6th Element – Void

The void or the nothing is the place where deep creative solutions come from.  Counterintuitively, not knowing how to solve problems or recover from intense experiences makes us more open to creative ways to solve them and recover.  In Chinese Daoist thinking, everything comes from nothing.  Everything and nothing are yin and yang – 2 sides of the same thing.  

When your mind is overactive after an intense experience, creating pockets of time where you do absolutely nothing is helpful to recovery.  Doing nothing gives the core 4 elements and chance to come back into balance.  The “nothing” gives them all space to begin moving and flowing in their own way and to come into your awareness.  

Using The 6 Elements to Recover From Intense Experiences

After the attempted murder trial I was a juror for, I noticed that the air element (intellect) was hyperactive.  The water element (emotions) weren’t flowing and I was disconnected from the earth element (body).  I struggled to do yoga because my mind was so active and restless. 

This experience taught me to power of the void.  I’d always seen it as all about deep creativity.  But I stumbled on another way of viewing the void in a journal I bought after the trial – “the Change Journal”.  One of the chapters talks of the benefit of doing nothing so that you can create space to hear your inner guidance and not be pulled off track by others’ agendas and opinions.  

10 minutes of nothing – no meditation, no reading, no listening to music – absolutely nothing interrupted the air element just long enough to allow the other elements to come back online and move me back into optimum balance again.  

So here’s the cycle:

• • • • A storm comes and your body, intellect, emotions and spiritual self react to it
      • You then use the void (the nothing) to interrupt the stuck reaction 
      • In the void, your emotions can begin to flow, you body can begin to shake off the tension, you can use your psychic and creative capacities to visualise the inner balance
      • Give each element space to process the experience (the time needed will vary depending on how intense the experience was)
      • Keep creating space until you find peace and balance again 

I found it helpful to journal thoughts and emotions during this process.  You may also need someone else to help you throught the process, but this will help you know what kind of practitioner to seek out.  

Does your body need more support to release tension? 

Do you need help getting your emotions to flow and tell you their wisdom?

Do you need to change stuck thoughts?

Do you need more psychic or visualisation help? 

Or perhaps you need more than 1? 

Applying The 6 Element Model To Deeper Healing

In my work, I use the 4 elements together to bring about inner balance and peace after intense experiences.  I get my clients to use the imagination to get a picture of what the problem is, or I might ask what’s happening in the body.  The body tells the truth of now and what the clients is ready to look at in that moment.  Then I continue holding the space as the psyche’s deeper wisdom comes through and brings the elements back into balance.  It’s also about writing the bigger story that intense experiences are set in.  Within intense experiences, there can be a deep soul invitation to go deeper than ever before to create strong inner peace that can weather all the storms life can bring. 

For this kind of work, it’s so important to work with someone that you feel comfortable with, so listen to your intuition as you select who to work with. 

Rooted in Humanity, Guided By Soul

The 6 Element model helps you embrace the depths of what it is to be human.  Instead of the spiritual by-passing and utopian dreaming that can leave you disconnected from life and people, the 6 Element Model invites you to go deeper into yourself to connect more deeply with our shared humanity.  

And open the space to guided by your soul.