Air, Fire, Earth and Water:
How the Elements Define our Emotional Blockages

Healing our Emotional Blockages

The four elements of astrology  are a useful tool for understanding how the elements define our emotional blockages.  Healing is about breaking down the barriers to authenticity that limit us. It is a matter of erasing the limitations we have taken on because of trauma of various sorts. There are a lot of ways of characterizing these limitations. We can focus on issue categories like childhood trauma, relationship issues, issues of family or peer group dynamics. We experience limitations in life that are all about us avoiding certain feelings.

One of the guiding beliefs in my healing practice is that “it’s all about emotional avoidance”. We have feelings we avoid and we have various strategies for avoiding our feelings and, therefore, our healing.

Using the elements gives us another way of looking at our barriers. There are different ways we block our own healing and avoid our own pain based on the elements involved.

In the end, or task is overcoming emotional blockage, processing our stuck emotions and issues and evolving into the person we were born to be. We all have a life purpose and that purpose is blocked when we block our emotional energy.

Blocking our Emotions with the Air Element-Thought

The air element is one of the most widely used to avoid processing our emotions. Air is all about thought and intellect. When we intellectualize and constantly attempt to “figure our” our emotions, we actually disconnect from feeling to a huge degree. Emotional processing requires you to feel your feelings in an embodied way. Your feelings are actually physical sensations. Physical sensations cannot be intellectualized away. They must be dealt with in a way that is connected to our physicality. We have to stay embodied to truly heal emotionally.

Avoiding our emotions through the air element is a seductive strategy because it gives the ego the feeling that it is truly doing the work. It’s like saying that you don’t need to actually travel to Japan if you have a Master’s degree in Japanese history and have seen countless movies and read countless books about Japan. The fact is, no amount of intellectual work is a substitute for actually being in Japan. Knowing all about the roots of your pain can actually be a barrier to healing it.

I believe this is the main trap of traditional therapy and therapists. Too much is understood about the emotions and their origins but nothing has changed fundamentally. The air element puts us into a state of semi false knowingness. We can tell you all about the origins of our bad behavior and emotional suffering but the behavior and suffering continue. And now, with this empowering sense of knowingness, we are almost immune to really going deep into the emotional space where true healing could occur.

Using the Fire Element to Block Emotions-Passion

The fire element is a very effective protection against feeling our pain. We surround our pain with raging flames and punish anyone, including ourselves, foolish enough to go poking into the unwanted feelings that we keep pushing away.

The fire element is an easy one to get a handle on. If someone hurts you, or touches on some of your chronic pain, you blast them with anything from silent smoldering rage to loud rage to violence. The person who gets angry when questioned about their feelings is using the fire element to protect the emotions that they could be healing

The fire element is also seductive because it can bolster the ego with the feeliing of pride. When you lash out you may feel a surge of energy that is pleasant in the moment. Usually this is because you have substituted anger for sadness. It can feel like a huge upgrade but, it oftentimes leads to unnecessary patterns of drama, conflict and volititlity in relationships.

Using the Earth Element to Block Emotions-Practicality Denying the Intangible

The earth element is about being grounded and embodied when we are using this energy in a healthy way. It is practical and effective, looking at the world clearly and focusing on “what is”. It can also be an energy of stubbornness and lack of imagination.

One way we can use the earth element to block our emotional pain is by writing it off as normal. “Everyone is insecure so I don’t feel the need to work on my insecurity.” If you use this way of thinking in one way it can be very healthy. You don’t suffer as much shame of you realize that most people share your issues in some way. But it can also express in an unhealthy way, having the feeling of, “That’s just the way things are. You can’t change it.”

The earth element bows to the status quo much of the time. It cites history as precedent and takes comfort in the unchanging nature of the world. That’s great, except for when it’s not. This is a conservative element, one focused on the tangible and suspicious of anything as fleeting as a thought or feeling.

Water blocking Water

The water element is about emotion, feeling, intuition. So, how can it block those same things? Easy.

The genius method the water element uses is lack of clarity or confusion. It’s very similar to the air element except now we are using feelings rather than thoughts.

Emotions block other emotions in a very effective way. They stir everything up into a big mess that’s impossible to sort through. When we feel rage, insecurity, disappointment, fear and hope all at once, for example, it is hard to really know what’s going on. A lot of the time we use many emotions to hide the one we don’t want to deal with. If insecurity is the emotion we are avoiding, we can use rage, disappointment, fear and hope to avoid feeling the insecurity. A lot of people go into anger in order not to feel sad or afraid. You have seen it and you have probably done it.

I see this a lot when I am working with a client on an emotinal issue. Right when we get to the painful core of the issue the client will often deflect with another emotion that also causes them problems. I get it. And their point is not wrong. It’s just that a part of them that is in emotional denial is protecting their pain with another type of pain. It is difficult to focus on one emotion at a time because they are water. Water does not have defined boundaries on it’s own. It requires land (Earth) for its boundaries. But, if we are to heal our emotions we need to untangle the web and deal with them one at a time, to the extent that it is possible to do so.

Conclusion

So, now what do we do?

I recommend you ponder how you are blocking your own emotional healing and transformation using the tool of the elements. Look at your emotional avoidance patterns in terms of air, fire, earth and water. It will bring a lot of self awareness to use this approach to understand what keeps certain emotions blocked. When you have any kind of blockage the universe keeps bringing you opportunities to heal. Unfortunately they usually don’t feel like “opportunities” but rather like the exact emotion you have been avoiding.

All emotions can be processed, digested and healed. This is because, at your core you are a soul. These issues, and the evoloution they provoke, are why you are here in this incarnation.