It's Play Time!

Did you know that it is Leo season? That means that this is a time of aligning with our joy, our deepest pleasures, and living our life from our true purpose (insert my dramatic swinging open of the windows and singing!) It is also the season of Fire in the Chinese 5 Elements which means we are in a time of abundance and expansion.

At my house, that means that the garden has gone to shit…

Look y’all, the Fire season is not messing around. It can be a beautiful time of enjoying the bounty that the seeds of our winter and spring produce (imagine a rolling hillside full of beautifully cultivated fruits and vegetables) but it can also be a holy HOT mess (my garden full of weeds and if you dig deep enough some zucchini and peppers). When our Fire is out of balance we feel STRESSED OUT!

Things move too fast, we can’t keep up, we feel scattered and chaotic, and what we really need is to plant our feet and dig into a system that would help but all we really want to do is go to the beach and dig our ass into the sand (well, maybe that’s just me).

Fire helps us to transform the visions and ideas of our Wood energy in spring into action and abundance. It is the spark, the flame, and the warmth. But like every good August in the south, it can also be TOO hot and we seek to lie still and drink something stupidly cold, and maybe poor said drink over the top of our heads.

What fire needs to help keep it in balance is a healthy dose of Earth energy. Shockingly (said with all of the sarcasm words on a page can muster), what we need most when we are overgrown is a solid gardener, the energy within us to tend to ourselves, take gentle sweet care of ourselves, nurture and weed our gardens and love ourselves more deeply. Earth energy helps us to ground, slow down, to pay attention, and stick with one thing through its completion.

This is NOT a time to plant more, to add more, to do more! It is a time to relax into the abundance that summer brings, to take time to connect to yourself and your loved ones, go swimming, enjoy the woods, talk to dolphins and PLAY!

Now for those of you who know me, I love PLAY! I am a FIRE in the 5 Elements, and I coach a life guided by joy, pleasure, and play. But I find often that people can feel very confused by this idea. "But Laura," they say "how can I lead a life of pleasure when I have to pay the bills?".

Look y'all, I am NOT one of those people who believes that life is all play. I MEAN, on many levels, I have not had an easy life so I get it! But what I do know is that I have been working myself, and helping my clients, for many years, to help dig in and find what it is we are put here to do and then releasing any story around why we cannot do it. That doesn't always mean quitting our jobs and waiting for the universe to fund your next vacation (although I am not saying that that can't work).

I am saying, can you start to move more towards what brings you pleasure in your life? Can you make 20% more space for it in your week? Can you look at what you do to make money less about your "job" and more "in service" to get you where you want to go? Can you start to let go of the story you tell yourself about what you can and cannot "do" in this lifetime? Sometimes the universe will demand big action and trust from you and you will need to release something that is no longer serving you, but it always starts with baby steps. It starts with making more space and allowing that pleasure to expand. That is the power of this FIRE season! Now get out and play!