Breath, Bone, and Elemental Magic

Learning from ancestral systems for staying human and whole through times of intense transformation

Before I had language for it, I felt it: a deeper interconnectedness with everything alive.

Animals, plants, the landscapes of my childhood, certainly my toys, I didn’t think of them as separate from me. I just felt with them. And the place I remember that feeling most clearly was the beach.

Feet in the sand. The ocean washing over me, pulling back. The warmth of the sun on my skin. The breeze cooling me. Looking out at the horizon, wide and curved, like I could feel the whole Earth, alive and breathing. I wouldn’t have said I was “connected to the elements” at the time, but in retrospect, that’s exactly what it was. Earth. Water. Fire. Air. Space. All happening at once. All around and through me.

Even at home, it was there in a quieter way. Observing houseplants. Studying how they grew, moved, or responded. Daydreaming with them. That sense that everything had some kind of life inside it. Even my stuffed animals and action figures felt alive to me, and they felt with me, somehow. That animistic awareness has been there as long as I can remember.

At the time, I didn’t have the words for it. I didn’t know what it meant. I just knew the world was deeper than what I was taught to see.

And whenever I’d talk about things like that, how I could feel the ocean’s pulse, or sense the grounded presence of the trees, their bark and roots alive with memory, and hold deep reverence for the fruit they offered, rich with pleasure and sustenance—someone in my family would always say the same thing:

“You’re just like Cousin Brucie.”

I was never sure what that meant. It was said with a shrug, a soft way to place me somewhere within the cosmology of the family. But it stuck. I had never met Cousin Brucie. All I knew was that he’d been a professor at Rutgers, then gone to India in the ’60s, and had barely been heard from since. He was a kind of myth in the family who had disappeared into some other way of life.

But I kept hearing it.
You’re just like Cousin Brucie.
You’re just like Cousin Brucie.

And eventually, I decided to find him.

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I didn’t expect it to be easy. In fact, I expected it to be much harder than it was. All I knew was that he had studied healing arts in India, disappeared into some kind of spiritual practice, and wasn’t really in touch with the family anymore. But when I searched, he appeared almost instantly.

One evening I brought my laptop to my wife, incredulous, saying, “this might not be the Cousin Brucie, but look at this Bruce Burger I found, how crazy would it be if he was the Cousin Brucie?! Look at the work he does, it’s eerily similar to me!”

Not only had he written a book, but I already owned it. Esoteric Anatomy, a foundational text on polarity therapy, had been on my shelf for years. When we confirmed it was him, we both had full body chills.

I reached out, we connected, and just last month we met for the first time. It was an uncanny experience for all of us, so many synchronicities and connections both with our family of origin and the paths we’ve chosen, the wisdom we’ve devoted our lives to, and how completely connected not only we felt, but our brilliant wives as well.

They welcomed us into their home, into their rhythm. They are in their 80s, and absolutely full of life, still teaching, parenting, gardening, cooking, hiking. They live in community, with integrity, with vitality, a powerful network of care in Northern California. And as we talked and cooked and wandered through the forests they call home, it became clear that though we’d just met, we’d all been working on the same frequency all along.

At one point, Bruce turned to me and said, “We’re flutes, you know. Breath and bone. The body is the instrument.” He wasn’t being poetic, he was speaking with precision.

Breath moves through us. What it plays depends on the shape of the vessel; how we’re tuned, how energy is moving, which elements are alive or asleep. Yes, it’s mystical, and it’s also biophysics.

He was naming, quite beautifully, what I practice and teach in my work with elemental Tantra, a Tibetan lineage that I practice within that works with elemental energies as distinct, physiological states that shape how we feel, respond, and relate.

I haven’t written much about this side of my work here, explicitly. It’s hard to do justice to the very real magic of embodied, elemental Tantra, but it’s an essential part of my work, and I’m ready to share it more openly.

This is the most important thing about this work. It doesn’t take you away from your life. It brings you more deeply into it, and calls you to live your most authentic life, from the inside out.

Bruce is a mirror for me in that.

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Bruce’s path and mine are different, but unmistakably aligned.

He was trained in polarity therapy and steeped in Hindu Tantric traditions. I’ve been initiated into Tibetan Five Element Tantra through the Shangpa Kagyu lineage, both precise systems with specific ethics around how teachings are transmitted, when, and to whom.

Closed practices like these aren’t exclusionary. They’re coherent, precise, and bound by standards. These systems carry power, and power needs ethical structure to not be misused. When a lineage protects its rituals, it’s not gatekeeping, it’s safeguarding pattern integrity, timing, and the conditions for actual transformation.

And still, there’s a wider current running through all of it.

I believe that elemental wisdom is not proprietary. It’s human. It shows up in every ancestral tradition, even if the language or structure looks different. Fire, earth, water, air, and space—these are not metaphors. They’re forces that shape the body, the psyche, and the ecosystem we’re embedded in. They’re physiological forces with real somatic signatures.

You don’t have to be initiated to feel them. You don’t need a spiritual vocabulary to recognize them. You already do.

And when you’re ready to dive into real, deep, powerful practices to work with these elemental forces, thankfully, there are intact lineages available to learn from and carry this work forward.

This is what Bruce and I were both working with, in our own ways: different rivers, same source. Not just lineage-based teachings, but the felt truth that life moves through elements. That healing is relational. That coherence, pleasure, and presence all speak the same primal language, a language that all of our ancestors have spoken, if we go far enough back.

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There’s something here that’s obvious to me, and I wonder if it’s obvious to you too. I’m speaking to you, reader, if you’re aware of the unfolding collapse of the modern world, and if you feel yourself in the emerging pulse of something different, something with an ancient voice asking to be heard as everything changes in these times we’re living in.

You know, we know, that there is living wisdom in our bodies and the body of this earth. That the elements live in and through and all around us, and that we should not ignore them.

There is a practical magic here, and it’s asking us to live and to show up to life..

The message is this: we don’t need to transcend this world. We need to belong to it.

All of our ancestors knew this at some point. There is earth-magic and body-magic in all of our lineages, and reconnecting with it just might be essential for navigating the liminal space between worlds that we find ourselves in.

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Somatic Tuning: How the Elements Move Through Us

Bruce’s words stayed with me: “We’re flutes. Breath and bone.” At first, I just nodded. But the more I sat with it, the more it felt precise, not poetic.

Each breath moves through us like sound through an instrument. What it plays depends on the shape of the vessel; how we’re tuned, how energy is moving, which elements are active, depleted, or seeking restoration. These elements—Air, Fire, Water, Earth, and Space—aren’t abstract concepts. They’re physiological signatures. Somatic expressions your body already knows how to feel.

When this ancestral knowledge is brought into practice, it becomes a kind of inner tuning.

Here’s a brief map of how these elemental energies express themselves, and how you might begin to notice and engage them:

Air – The Breath of Voice and Movement

Quick. Light. Curious. Air lives in your speech, your laughter, the lift in your gestures. It moves through your throat, skin, fingertips, in your need to move, connect, express.

Try this: Sit upright. Inhale through your nose. On the exhale, let out a soft hum or open “hah” as you stretch your arms wide. Feel the breath moving sound down your throat. Let it ride your voice.

Fire – The Breath of Charge and Will

Sharp. Rising. Focused. Fire breath engages your sympathetic activation, feeding metabolism, clarity, and arousal. It’s the inner “yes” or “no” that cuts through confusion.

Try this: Inhale sharply through the nose. Exhale forcefully through the mouth. On each inhale, pulse your pelvic floor or lightly clench your fists. After five breaths, pause and notice what’s shifted.

Water – The Breath of Emotion and Flow

Rolling. Swaying. Emotional. Water breath invites grief, release, and restoration. It connects your breath to your tears, your hips, your fluid body.

Try this: Lying or seated, begin to gently sway your body side to side. Inhale through the nose, exhale on a soft audible sigh. Let your spine guide you. Let the sound be soft, wet, wave-like.

Earth – The Breath of Gravity and Root

Low. Slow. Anchoring. Earth breath restores structure. It draws energy into your belly, legs, and bones.

Try this: Sit or stand with your feet flat on the ground. Inhale slowly through your nose. Exhale longer through your mouth, pressing your feet down slightly. On the next exhale, gently engage your core, squeeze your thighs, then release. Repeat three times.

Space – The Breath of Stillness and Witnessing

Silent. Expansive. Integrative. Space breath is the pause between—the effortless awareness that holds all the other elements. It’s what returns when you stop trying to fix, chase, or force.

Try this: Close your eyes. Let your breath happen on its own. Listen for the furthest sound. Feel the room around you and the space between thoughts. Do nothing. Just notice.

These are doorways. Simple, body-based cues that invite the nervous system into resonance. Over time, they become a kind of inner musicianship—the art of tuning your body to what’s needed now.

Below is a simplified version of the Tibetan Five Element Chart, drawn from the Shangpa Kagyu lineage, a precise and deeply embodied map for tracking elemental states across body, energy, and awareness.

A reference chart of the properties of the five elements within the Shangpa Kagyu lineage. This chart is useful to all practitioners of this form of Tantra as a diagnostic tool and as a dynamic reminder of the multidimensional nature of each element, and of ourselves as we work with each element.

I’ve been teaching this for years, practicing it in my own life for longer, and integrating it into my marriage, my self-awareness, the way I diagnose the subtle shifts in my mental and emotional states. Over the years, I’ve created a wealth of educational material for my 1-1 clients to understand not only this system, but the way subtle energy, especially sexual energy, can be directed to transform our lives. This summer, I’ve distilled all of that work into a course format: Embodying Tantra course.

In Embodying Tantra, we're not just cultivating elemental awareness, but diving into how each element serves as an antidote to specific patterns of disconnection.

Because each element doesn’t just express a state, it has the power to counterbalance disfunction:

Earth steadies chaos. When you’re dissociated or overwhelmed, it roots you back into structure and weight.
Water softens armoring. When you’re numb or overly controlled or controlling, it invites release and emotional fluidity.
Fire clears stagnation. When you’re stuck or indecisive, it reignites direction and clarity.
Air lifts collapse. When your voice dims or you disconnect, it restores movement and connection.
Space integrates fragmentation. When everything feels too much, it holds you in awareness without demand.

This pattern literacy is an absolute super power, a diagnostic tool, and a source of continuous creative empowerment. It’s learning how to be with what’s arising, and how to meet it with precision, compassion, and skill.

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The Science of Elemental Embodiment

This elemental system is a physiological map. When we speak of Earth, Fire, Water, Air, and Space, we’re not speaking conceptually—we’re pointing to actual, felt states in the body. You don’t imagine Earth. You become grounded, rooted, intentional. You don’t picture Water. You begin to sway, soften, feel. These shifts aren’t imaginative; they’re sensory, trackable, and deeply somatic.

What ancient systems tracked through experiential patterning, modern science is beginning to corroborate. I began to see this early on in my Tantra training, and the connections only get clearer and clearer. Each elemental state correlates with distinct patterns of autonomic activity, what polyvagal theory might describe as mobilization, social engagement, immobilization, or ventral rest. Though these terms can sound abstract until you’ve begun to integrate them into your felt-sense awareness, these are essentially the states that shape how we breathe, connect, and respond all the time, to everything. This is the terrain of somatic healing, where breath, awareness, and subtle movement give the body new ways to feel and repattern itself in day to day life..

Central to this lineage and practice is a chakra system that might be a little bit different than what you’re familiar with. In truth, there are far more chakras, and far more chakra systems than have reached western New Age teachings and metaphysical shops. Within Embodying Tantra, we work with the Shangpa Kagyu lineage’s five-elemental chakra model. Each chakra aligns with nerve plexuses, fascia, and endocrine centers. When we bring breath, sound, and attention to these centers, we’re not just visualizing, we’re entraining. We’re directing biophysical attention toward neuroendocrine activation.

Science is starting to catch up: studies now show the brain emits light—biophotons that can be measured through the skull.¹ The body is, quite literally, a resonant field of light and sound. The mantras used in practice aren’t mystical passwords. They’re vibrational inputs that stimulate nerve centers, regulate vagal tone, recalibrate internal rhythm, and open deep pathways for healing.

Breath of fire is a dynamic input to stimulate sympathetic activation and metabolize stagnation. Gentle toning vibrates the vagus nerve through the vocal cords. Swaying evokes fluid resonance through the spine, loosening rigidity. These are not belief-based practices. They are pattern interventions—ways of giving the nervous system new options.

With repetition, they become more than interventions. They become integration. Elemental embodiment builds neuroplasticity—the body’s capacity to hold more charge, complexity, and presence without fragmentation.

This is the deeper invitation: not to believe in energy, but to experience it. To sense how sound and breath and subtle movement reorganize the body toward wholeness. To remember that transformation isn’t an abstract idea used to sell things, it’s essential to all living systems, and is an ongoing practice of embodiment.

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Healing through Returning

There’s a common story in spiritual culture: that awakening requires departure. That to grow, you must leave your family, your past, even your name behind. But sometimes, the deeper path is not exile, it’s return.

Not a return to sameness, smallness; not regression. But something more intricate and intentional: a reweaving, a mending of threads you may have thought were lost. This is one definition of the word Tantra, to weave.

In the field of Integral Theory we use the term, “Transcend and Include” as opposed to the all too common “Transcend and Abandon”.

Meeting Bruce felt like that.

For most of my life, I’d been carrying something I didn’t have language for. A sensitivity, a curiosity, a way of listening that no one around me seemed to share. I felt that there was more to life than what I saw on the surface, and it was very lonely. I thought I had to go it alone. But sitting across from him, hearing my own language in his, seeing my uncle’s face in his, hearing my sense of humor come out of his mouth, I realized I wasn’t the first in my line to feel this way. I wasn’t an outlier. I was a continuation.

He had followed the current before I knew it existed. And now, decades later, here we were, on different curves of a spiral, somehow arriving together.

To those of you reading this who have felt alone in your seeing: what if your perception isn’t an anomaly? What if it’s a remembrance? A kind of inherited listening that skipped a generation, or two, or five—but never stopped being there, pulsing in a subtle dimension of your heritage?

Elemental practice becomes a way to listen back. Not to who your family told you to be. But to what your body remembers, what the earth is calling us to be. This may be the rhythm, coherence, and knowing that’s been living in you all along.

Sometimes, healing looks like finding others. And sometimes, it looks like realizing they were closer than you thought.

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Living the Elements Through Collapse

In the times we’re living through, there is a limit to what we can do to prepare for futures that have so many wildly varied outcomes. Truly, anyone who tells you what the future will look like, anywhere on the spectrum between utopia or oblivion, is only seeing part of the picture. There is a wider spectrum of probable futures than anyone can imagine.

And how we live, matters. How we perceive and operate and embody change shapes outcomes in more ways than our conscious mind can track. Listening to our bodies, to the earth, to the elements is one powerful skillset that can function as a cybernetic navigation operating system as we move through the chaos of our lives. It’s an anchoring into something primordial and eternal that is always available to guide us back toward wisdom and clarity.

This is an adaptive practice. Your body will learn to be with contradiction and complexity without dissociation. To meet grief without collapse. To hold beauty without bypass. These are skills for thriving in uncertainty.

And within all of this, your erotic energy isn’t an indulgence, it’s essential. It’s where life comes from, and if we are to create life affirming futures, we must work with this energy. It tells you what’s alive, what’s resonant, what’s a no. It helps you feel boundary, direction, and connection. It’s part of how the body orients in times of change.

This essay, this lineage, these practices—they’re not just for personal healing. They’re technologies of resilience, templates for intimacy, transformation, and collective nervous system repair. They help us show up with more presence in the unknown. And right now, the unknown is arriving fast.

🖖✨🐌,

Seth!

1. Fascinating new neuroscience study shows the brain emits light through the skull, article here, study here.