A Different Kind of Fire
A reflection on presence, restlessness, and the slow return of coherence
Over the last week, I began exploring the Five Elements of Chinese Medicine through both story and practice. In Five Elemental Short Takes I offered a poetic introduction to the Elements as phases of being—through the voices of Taoism, Jung, Alan Watts, Yin Yoga, and Teresa of Ávila. Then, in Integral Yin Yoga: From Fascia to Spirit, I introduced two practices that work with the dynamics of Wood and Fire—exploring the relationship between fascia, circulation, personal boundaries, and Spirit.
This week, I’m continuing that thread—diving more fully into the Fire Element and its deep relevance for practice. This reflection begins in the early hours of a summer morning and wanders into the subtle teachings of restlessness, presence, and the Shen—the spirit of the Heart.
And if you’d like to embody these ideas more fully, this week’s Meditation Experiment and Yin Practice Lab (for paid subscribers) will extend the Fire theme into breath, body, and awareness.
Reflection on Yin Yoga and the Fire Element
Around four in the morning, I found myself awake again. There wasn’t any real drama behind it. The air was still. My body was tired. But something in my chest had its own ideas—an uneasy warmth, not sharp but persistent, sitting right behind the sternum.
There’d been dreams, I think. They had already slipped away by then, leaving behind their residue: a hum in the nervous system, a hint of unfinished business. I am becoming familiar with this territory.
Getting up, I walked to the next room and lay down on my mat, on my back, supine. Savasana. Lying flat sometimes returns a kind of humble truth. The kind that lets you feel how things actually are.
As I settled onto the floor, I started to notice how shallow my breath had become. The breath was there, of course, but it felt shortened, clipped at the top. The pulse had a jitter to it, like it was being asked to perform. Behind my ribs, that restlessness lingered—warm, slightly displaced, unwilling to dissolve just because I’d decided to be still.
In the Five Element system, Fire governs the Heart and its spirit—Shen. That word can be hard to translate, but it points toward the organizing spark of consciousness itself. When Fire is balanced, the Shen has a place to dwell in the heart. There’s a rhythm to things. Perception becomes luminous. The moment seems capable of holding its own weight.
When Fire scatters, the rhythm becomes noisy. Chasing joy speeds up and flattens. The body becomes less of a home and more of a waiting room. You show up, but not all the way. Something or someone gets left behind.
I didn’t have words for what was happening that morning. I wasn’t chasing a satisfying diagnosis. I was just staying there, watching the breath play out its pattern, letting the mat hold the part of me that couldn’t yet land.
There’s a phrase from Ajahn Amaro that’s stuck with me: “Bitter practice, sweet result.” The longer I practice, the more that feels less like advice and more like a law of the nervous system. It’s not about seeking out struggle, but understanding that certain insights only arrive after you’ve stopped trying to feel better. When I stay with what’s difficult long enough, something beneath it starts to move.
In Yin Yoga, this often begins as something physical—a stretch that awakens discomfort, a shape that feels like too much space, too soon. But then another layer starts to make itself known. A memory, maybe. A pulse of mood that doesn’t seem to belong to anything current. You let it rise, and if you're patient, the structure that holds it all starts to soften.
That morning, the postures weren’t anything remarkable, or part of a Fire Element sequence—just a long-held Savasana that led to a general Yin Yoga flow (backbend, hips, forward folds, twists). Over the course of the practice, the shift began subtly. My breath started to widen. My pulse slowed, dropping into a quieter register. That unsettled warmth in the chest didn’t vanish, but it no longer seemed like a threat. More like a messenger who had finally been acknowledged.
Physiologically, I know what’s happening. The stillness helps stimulate the vagus nerve. The breath sends signals back to the brainstem that things are safe again. The capillaries open, blood redistributes, the inflammatory noise turns down. But I rarely think of it in those terms while I’m on the mat.
Instead, I pay attention to the small recalibrations. The weight of my body becoming less defended. My breath becoming less performative. The sense that my body is no longer waiting for the next thing.
It’s in those moments that the deeper function of Fire becomes clear: something like the capacity to circulate experience through the whole system—to feel something fully, to let it move, and to not have to disown it.
There’s a kind of Fire that gets all the airtime—brilliant, wild, fast. It’s what culture tends to worship: creative frenzy, spiritual ecstasy, righteous outrage. But there’s another kind that I’ve come to trust more. The kind that works slowly, under the surface. The kind that keeps the hearth warm while the world swirls.
That kind of Fire asks, yes, for attention, but equally for patience. It waits for me to stop performing my own transformation.
And when I rose from the mat that morning, I felt like I’d returned to the same place—but more completely. The disquiet was still there in traces, but it had changed character. It wasn’t humming to be noticed anymore. It was resting. My spirit—or whatever you want to call it—was back in the house.
Closing
The work of Fire isn’t always to purify. Sometimes it’s just to keep you warm while the internal weather changes. When the Shen has scattered, the practice is less about retrieval and more about invitation. You offer your body to the breath, your attention to the body, and you wait. And in that waiting, something familiar begins to return—usually quieter than you expected, but just as real.
If you come to the mat this week with restlessness, anxiety, or that peculiar sense of being near your life rather than in it, let the posture be your hearth. Let it hold what you don’t yet know how to name or meet. As I’m rediscovering, a breakthrough isn’t necessary, only the need to stay.
In practice,
Josh
This week’s Meditation Experiment and Yin Practice Lab (for paid subscribers) will explore the Fire Element through breath, shape, and awareness. I’ll guide you through practices that invite coherence, calm, and a deep return of spirit.