Navigating Fear: How to Listen to Your Stomach for Guidance
Dear community,
I am focusing on the topic of personal empowerment this month in the Elemental Medicine Healing community as we start to feel things heating up, moving into the energy of summer. This inspired me to cover the topic of fear with the fire element and how the stomach can be a fantastic guide to recognise fear for its purpose, while not allowing it to take over.
The universe has prepared me beautifully to write this newsletter! Over these past weeks leading up to June, fire tested me. On one side, I have been aware of the heat in my stomach, and feeling a sense of excited motivation to move forward in my life. On the other hand, fear was arising and creating a strong tension within.
Like the devil and the angel on my shoulders. One whispered to take the leap, enjoy, and do what I am destined to do in this life. Then the devil chimed in and projected a movie in my mind of all the times things failed in the past. Sometimes the angel and the devil showed up personified as people. Some projected their fears, others admired strength.
How Can the Stomach Support Us?
When connecting with the stomach, we can access the truth in the center of all of these expressions of fire. Up in the brain, the amygdala handles the processing of fearful information. It is the part of the nervous system that we use to keep us safe. All of the data from times when something harmful has happened is stored in there.
This stops us from harming ourselves and supports us in making better and better decisions as we age to stay safe in various situations, from physical to mental to spiritual experiences. Naturally, we can notice an effect on our thoughts based on the information accumulated in this part of the brain.
When you consciously move your awareness down from the mind and into the stomach, it allows for a different approach to managing the energy of fear. Some things that create a fear response can be irrational, like a fear of cats, for example. By solely listening to the information from past experiences, this can lead us to avoiding things that actually do not pose a threat to our safety.
Your stomach supports you to connect with the home of your fire, your solar plexus energy center. From here, it is possible to both respect information that is there to keep you safe while also, when it feels right, push yourself to overcome certain fears, which will empower you to go beyond your previous limitations, allowing for new possibilities of success and achievement to manifest.
Overcoming the Limitations of Fear
Over these past four months, I was faced with an immense task of overcoming a fear that has plagued me for years. At the beginning of this year, I separated from a serious relationship, and from that, I had to move home, and the retreat center project that I was working on fell through. Many things that I had been putting a lot of energy into disappeared.
That investment of time and energy that I was putting in to create a stable home and community dissolved. I was sitting at square one again in many ways. At the beginning of the transition, I did not even have the energy to be afraid. I was simply exhausted! Fortunately, as well, I had the opportunity to attend a retreat to work with the sacred medicines of Tobacco and Ayahuasca.
I wrote a piece about my experience at that retreat in my personal publication, which you can check out here if you are interested. The question that I had to sit with when faced with this change was whether I was going to make decisions based on fear or based on purpose. This is where the navigation of my stomach came in to support me in more ways than one.
By tuning into my solar plexus, it was possible to change the fear of failing into a motivation to follow my life purpose. I absolutely love this work with the elements that I share with you all. I have spent years training to learn how this language of fire, air, earth, and water works and how it can support us to heal and awaken our true potential.
The universe has aligned me with incredible teachers from all over the world. It has been an honour to spend a lot of time translating this information into resources to share with this community. Even after doing all of this work, training, and teaching, the fear of failure still held me back.
When sitting in this big transition in my life, I worked with my inner fire to really look at this fear and find out where it was coming from, because one thing was abundantly clear: this was not serving me or this project. I realised the root of the fear had a lot to do with my mixed-up perceptions of value.
A lot of my training to be able to do this work is not visible in formal qualifications. Learning from Indigenous healers and spending a lot of time with sacred plants does not provide this type of structure of degrees or titles. The difference in my educational path was feeding this fear of failure because I was comparing myself to others who have extensive formal education, and essentially, this resulted in me not seeing my true value as a result.
I noticed these feelings of unworthiness were significantly hindering my ability to generate money from this work. Overcoming this crisis in confidence became my work for four months alone in the mountains of Colombia. I had to consistently practice being conscious of my mind and coming back into my body, particularly my stomach, to burn through the fear to ensure success in my intentions, one of which is, of course, for Elemental Medicine Healing to be a successful project that offers support to many people around the world.
Trusting Your Inner Power
Fire medicine within the stomach can connect you with your ancestry and also your soul history. We can uncover answers for why we chose to incarnate in this life to awaken a motivation within that goes deeper than any fear can reach. From working with clients and my personal journey, I have seen that the fire does not come into balance until we align with our purpose.
There will be consistent signs coming from the body, such as anxiety, restlessness, and even intense states of anger. When we know we are being drawn off course from our true purpose in life, that is the time to connect with the home of our inner fire in the stomach. Personal empowerment is fueled by believing in ourselves.
If this is a time in your life when you are battling to align with more of your true potential, it is helpful to be aware of the thoughts, media, and even relationships that are feeding the fear. Noticing what feeds fear vs what feeds motivation is a game changer. Those who live in fear of awakening their divine potential will often project that onto others.
Use your fiery awareness to discern where you are going. By staying connected with your inner power, you will easily be able to identify when people are projecting their fear on you. Oftentimes it comes in the form of advice. It can be helpful to take a moment to question if that guidance from others is coming from fear. If it is, then you know it is not going to fuel your inner power.
Fire medicine teaches us to be discerning and disciplined, to be able to focus on a task to be successful. The fear can win, it can lure us into a life of complacency, an existence that is good enough. Therefore, it is a battle to win that life that aligns with purpose rather than pain. For me, this has been the most important battle to win. The way I see it, my life is on the line.
When we wake up to the stakes and choose a side, that is when the magic happens. It becomes possible to use that inner power to succeed rather than survive. Trusting that inner power to get you where you feel called to go is the journey of a lifetime. Each decision that you make from your inner guidance system will bring you into deeper connection with yourself.
I chose a side while in my epic battle with fear in a cabin in the woods! I decided to give my all to this work that I have been dedicating myself to for years now. With that, you can expect a lot more medicine to be coming through from Elemental Medicine Healing. Wonderful to be connected with you here on the journey of awakening our true potential.
Elemental Medicine Class
Fire Medicine & The Stomach
This month, I have a class about the stomach that offers insights about the symbolism of the stomach, stomach ailments, and how to bring more harmony into your inner fire. By tuning into this class, you'll gain access to practical tools designed to support and enhance your connection to your inner fire throughout this month.
Sending you an abundance of love and light.
With gratitude,
Sofia
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