Each time I work on a book project, I not only learn about the topic, but also about myself. Catherine Rolt’s, The Pain Paradox, which is about to be released by Summit Press Publishers, is a perfect example. I knew next to nothing about Integrated Chinese Medicine–and now I’m a convert–and even less about my body’s warning signals when something is off. This morning, for instance, I felt a misplaced rage that made little sense. I could track it back, thanks to this book, to a water energy imbalance. I’ve got some work to do there. But where I’m given to deficiencies is in my fire energy. Because if there’s anyone more intense than me, who blows hotter then colder than me….I haven’t met them. You’d be amazed at the clues we fail to pick up on, the ones that can signal serious health issues, both the physical and emotional variety. 

This is a segment from The Pain Paradox.

 

Your summer season brings out that warmth and ability to not take too much too seriously. Fire, the element associated with summer, is about bubbly, playful expansiveness. Those with a strong summer/fire energy tend to be the life of the party: spontaneous, big on variety, fun.

I cannot deny that my mother had a lot of fire in her. She made the lives of many others slightly easier with her immense humor, dare, and outrageous style.

I once asked why she was cartwheeling down Beauchamp Place, a stylish street in the heart of London. Of course, being very young, I didn’t know whether to be appalled and embarrassed or really rather proud of my hippy mother.

“For fun, darling. Why?”

That is the summer/fire energy at play.

When your summer/fire systems are in balance, laughter and joy spill out easily. Internally, you can take yourself very lightly when the fire is steady. It is your summer/fire energy that responds with fun, laughter, and merriment to life and is deeply connected to your interactions with others. Relationships can improve immensely with just the art of laughing at yourself.

Have you ever noticed that when talking about subjects you love, you get “fired up”? Watch the reactions of others when watching a play, ballet, film, or sport—their whole faces are animated; watch when an attractive person walks into a room or when someone pays another attention. Sexual chemistry is presumed to be and is marketed as being solely based on relatively superficial criteria. However, when a person is animated and in their authority, they can be very magnetic to all of life. When the internal fire is strong, the magnetic force between people is usually easy to feel, see, and hear; on all levels, it is obvious.

Of course, you can also become deficient in summer/fire energy. This can look like sleep issues, intimacy/relationship issues, feeling flat, a lack of joy. When deficient, you may have trouble connecting, experiencing joy, or being spontaneous; you can feel like there’s something wrong with you.

Your fire, internally and externally, allows you the ability to give and receive love with appropriate degrees of emotional closeness. It helps you know how and when to be open or shut to people. Some people literally know how to turn the switch to their magnetic force field on or off, which is always fascinating to watch. Part of evolving and maturing is discovering that you, too, have a switch inside of you that you can consciously operate with integrity.

Imagine the ignition switch that lights the fire or the gas in a home; that is what you can learn to do for yourself with increasing effectiveness.

And when there is an imbalance in your summer/fire energy, your ability to let people in or keep them out is jeopardized.

Your fires will do whatever it takes to keep your embers going, however inappropriate it seems on the outside. When you are desperate for warmth, you will grab on to it from pure survival and adrenalize your fear; you will do whatever it takes to make a fire.

It takes time to learn how to fuel the embers from sustainable interactions that keep you warm, evenly, and on all levels.

When you have old and unresolved issues of the summer/fire energy and genuine love comes into your life, there will come a point when you can, unintentionally, project old hurts or wounds onto the new object of your love. Trust versus betrayal is a paramount issue for the two gates within your system.

The summer season within us, the official of balance and harmony, has four different energy systems which harmonize your fire energy. These systems always ensure that your throne—your heart—is kept safe and guarded while maintaining temperatures that stay steady throughout the many changes around it. When in balance and working steadily on your behalf, intimacy is spontaneous and without conscious thought.