Audio Practice #8 Four Elements (Earth, Water, Fire, Air) [9:23]
Instructions: Sit or lie down in a comfortable position, take a few full breaths, and click play ⏵ on the video or audio above.
This meditation is called Four Elements (Earth, Water, Fire, Air). It is adapted from a classic Buddhist meditation found in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, a discourse on the foundations of mindfulness. Here you are invited to visualize your body’s constituent elements and layers of reality as the same compositional process as the rest of the universe. These practices aid in decentring and non-identification.
Earth: This represents your body; bones, limbs, flesh, and muscle, no different than the ground on the earth, sand, trees, rocks, and mountains.
Water: This is all the fluids produced in your body. Around 65% of our body is water, the same percentage that covers the earth’s surface, more or less.
Fire: This is your metabolism and digestive system, like how the sun allows for photosynthesis. Heat becomes life.
Air: Breath is air, filling your lungs and cavities, exiting the body and returning to nature.
By observing the immediate presence of elements in our bodies and sensing each one viscerally, we can evoke an implicit sense of interconnectedness and impermanence. By deconstructing our bodies and selves into elemental parts, we can recognize that all things are temporarily constructed, including moments, and at the same time feel manifest with our environment.
