Practices that stoke your inner fire for calm, clarity, and vitality
I love the phrase “to tend to.” It is imbued with the meaning of care and attention. When I think of the word tend, my mind and heart go to tending a fire. A lovely fire must be tended to, or it will become smoldering coals or go out entirely.
The act of tending a fire creates a primal connection with those who have come before us. To our ancestors – fire meant protection, warmth, and survival.
We don’t have hearths that need tending anymore, but I suggest we have something just as important to tend to – the stoking and nourishing of our inner fire. According to Online Etymology Dictionary, the archaic definition of tend is to “direct one’s mind or energies.” I find this definition fascinating – as it offers wisdom from the past to illuminate our way forward.
An interesting question to ponder is – “What “fires” am I tending to – or where am I most frequently directing my mind and energy?”
Many of us are tending perceived fires in which we expend too much energy unnecessarily outward and leave our inner fire smoldering – waiting to be tended to. When we direct our mind and energy inward, which is a power move for the winter season, we increase our vitality, reclaim feeling grounded and centered, and settle into feelings of calm and clarity.
Fire Tending 101: Practices that stoke your inner fire for calm, clarity, and vitality
1. Feel your body, specifically your navel and heart area – where your attention goes, your energy flows.
- Stoke your belly fire – deep and slow belly breathing is like fanning or blowing into a fire to get it going. Allow your belly to fill with breath, and then fully release as you exhale. Invite the quality of groundedness into this area. With each exhale, allow gravity to have its way with you and settle into your hips – “drop in” to your core as a surfer would drop into a big wave.
- Stoke your heart fire – place your felt awareness in your heart area, feeling the sensation in the middle, front, and back of your heart area. With your intention, allow this area to soften, relax, and open. Imagine the unfurling of a fern. Playing with the imaginal, feel or “see” a soft glow radiating from the center of your heart area and extending outward to fill up your chest.
2. Seek beauty, and pause to take it in. This is a delightful way to stoke the fire of your heart and creative self. John O’Donohue puts it beautifully:
- “The human soul is Hungary for beauty; we seek it everywhere – in landscape, music, art, clothes, furniture, gardening, compassion shop, love, religion, and in ourselves. When we experience the Beautiful, there is a sense of homecoming. Some of our most wonderful memories are of beautiful places where we felt immediately at home. We feel most alive in the presence of the Beautiful, for it meets the needs of our soul.”
3. What lights you up? This is a very important question. Is it dancing to music? A walk in the woods? Connecting with someone over a cup of tea? A bath? Whatever it is, it feeds your inner fire and brings sweetness to your life. Make time to tend to your inner fire in this way at least once a week. A daily dose is even better and is just the medicine many of us need.
We would do well to bring such care and tend to our inner fire. It is what the season of winter and our soul calls for.
