“Fire calls us to reveal our true nature, to open to the unbearable beauty of creation, to riskthe heartbreak of loss in order to love the world more deeply.”- Lorie Eve Dechar

Hello friends,

I’m really looking forward to sharing this episode of the Element Sessions with you. As we step across into the summer season we are exploring the FIRE element in Chinese medicine. Last week I shared a Deep Dive into the FIRE element which you can catch up on using the link at the end of this post, plus as a paid subscriber you are very welcome to join us for our live journalling and embodiment call next Monday 26 May between 10 & 11am BST. For more info, check out the membership hub on my homepage.

When I was considering who to have a conversation with for this episode, The Harmony Principle’s Claire Dabreo came straight to mind - she speaks so eloquently and in such a grounded, practical way about how all of the elements show up in our lives, but in particular she has spoken a lot about what she calls Love Activism, which struck me as a particularly FIRE kind of activity … !

Here’s a little about Claire:

Claire Dabreo is a Five Element acupuncturist with practices in both London and the Isle of Arran. In 2020, she founded The Harmony Principle —a platform designed to help individuals align with the energy of the seasons, harness the wisdom of nature’s Creative Cycle, and support practitioners across all healing modalities in deepening their connection to nature, health, and the healing journey.

You can follow Claire @theharmonyprinciple and @thelondonacupuncturist on instagram and Facebook and sign up to her newsletter via her website www.theharmonyprinciple.com, as well as finding out more about her Autumn / Metal immersion retreat she is running this October.

During our conversation I wanted to hear how Claire approached this season of the year both herself and with her clients, as well as digging deep and exploring how, when there is so much darkness in the world, can we keep our own inner fires burning? I also wanted to ask her what role does JOY play in activism?

I found so much food for thought in this episode, most particularly for me I think around how the FIRE element relates to maturity and to this midlife phase of life I am in right now, as well as the simple yet eye-opening idea that this is the season of BEING rather than DOING !

Below is a summary of our chat, plus some of the tips Claire shared with us for aligning us to this time of year, and a link to an earlier conversation with our mentor Gerad Kite which I mention during the call.

Highlights include:

𓇸 Being v’s Doing: How the summer energy should be about BEING rather than DOING and the need to give ourselves permission to tend to our social batteries𓇸 Pleasure & Joy: The differences between pleasure (fleeting, often distraction-based, dopamine related) and joy (spontaneous, heart-centred, collective)𓇸 Navigating heartbreak: How we can learn to allow heartbreak and difficult emotions as normal, transformative experiences that connect us more deeply to ourselves and others𓇸 Joy as a propulsive force: Its importance as a transformative energy in dark times

𓇸 Inner and Outer Connection: Cultivating local, in-person community as an antidote to digital overload—nourishing micro-connections and supporting one another in tangible ways.

𓇸 Fire, Maturity & Midlife: The parallels between the fire element’s maturity and the empowerment of midlife women, how authenticity, boundaries, and “full bloom” can come with age.

𓇸 Practical Tools for Summer Alignment: Sunlight, essential oils on heart-centred acupuncture points (see tips below), honest assessment of social needs and even writing yourself a heartfelt love letter!

Tips and links mentioned in the call :

1. Here is our Deep Dive into the FIRE element:

2. I also mentioned this conversation with Master acupuncturist and mentor of both Claire’s and mine, Gerad Kite:

3. Here are Claire’s tips for using acupressure and essential oils to help us align with this FIRE season :

* Use essential oils like rose, ylang ylang, geranium or frankincense on a point called REN 17, also called ‘Sea of Qi,’ ‘Chest Centre’ or ‘Revealing the Heart’. A wonderful point to help clear anxiety or fear, settle any rising panic and gently send it back into the earth with love. Can help to ‘unbind the chest’, and open us to more easily access love and connection.

To locate Ren 17: On the midline of the sternum, in a depression level with the junction of the 4th intercostal space and the sternum – start under the clavicle and count down the spaces between each rib, then move to the centre of the chest. On a man, it is parallel with the nipple line.

With all essential oils Claire recommends diluting them with a carrier oil before using on acupoints, with these oils a max of 10% dilution is good.

* On two points known as the Inner and Outer Frontier Gates you can use Jasmine oil, again at same dilution as above. Our Gates are two points that both enable us to allow enough love and warmth and connection in, and also to know when it is appropriate to protect our hearts and keep our selves protected and safe. When our Gates are well oiled and functioning well there can be a warm flow of connection, communication and warmth between ourselves and others.

To locate: These points are located on the outside and inside of the lower arm, in the centre. To find them, place your ring finger on the wrist crease of the opposite arm, and lay your middle and index finger down beside them. The point will be located underneath your index finger, right in the centre of the arm, both inside and outside, opposite each other.

* Rose oil can also be used on Heart 7 ‘Great Mound’ to help ease anxiety and open the heart to maturity and give us a sovereign perspective.

To locate: This point is found on the baby finger side of the inside of the wrist, just below the bone that sticks out at that point (the pisiform bone). If you run your finger down the palm from the baby finger to your wrist your finger should fall over the wrist bone and into the hollow of the point.

* And this is the beautiful quote that Claire mentioned on the call:

“Fire calls us to reveal our truenature, to open to the unbearable beauty of creation, to riskthe heartbreak of loss in order to love the world more deeply.”- Lorie Eve Dechar

Would you like to join a growing community of heart-led, creative women writing and making in the gaps of our busy lives? find me at www.laylaomara.substack.com or on Instagram @laylaomarawrites

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This episode of the Element Sessions podcast uses the WOOD Element as a jumping off point for a conversation around ANGER.

In Chinese Medicine each of the Five Elements has an emotion connected to it, and for the WOOD element (which is also connected to the season of Spring that we are stepping into right now on this side of the globe) the emotion is ANGER.

There is no emotion that does not have its place, and there are times when appropriate anger is a really important catalysing force. There is also, from a Chinese Medicine perspective, times when anger and frustration surface because we are out of balance or feeling blocked or prevented from moving forward in the way we need to.

My good friend coach, doula and writer Jessie Harrold recently wrote a newsletter all about her own feelings of anger and how she was trying to deal with them and after reading it, I really wanted to dive even deeper and unpack a lot of what she touched on more.

Jessie is a coach and doula who has been supporting women through radical life transformations and other rites of passage for over fifteen years. She works one-on-one with women and mothers, facilitates mentorship programs, women’s circles and rituals, and hosts retreats and nature-based experiences. Jessie is the author of Mothershift: Reclaiming Motherhood as a Rite of Passage (Shambhala 2024) and Project Body Love: my quest to love my body and the surprising truth I found instead. She is also the host of The Becoming Podcast. Jessie lives on the east coast of Canada where she mothers her two children, writes, and stewards the land.

I wanted to chat with Jessie about why we might be feeling anger in our lives, where did she see it showing up for the clients she worked with, where might it be coming from, what might lie underneath the anger so many of us feel, how much of that anger should rightly be directed outwards at the over culture we live in, how much of that anger is masking other emotions such as grief, sadness, loss?

Why is it taboo for women to be seen to be angry? How does shame fit into it all? How can we take the anger we feel and harness it for positive change, rather than destructive attack? What role might surrender play?

We talk about all this and more in the hour we had together! I love the considered and grounded way Jessie approaches the topic and I came away from the conversation with so much food for thought.

I’m really hoping this chat with open up a continued dialogue around the anger we feel as women - where it comes from, and where it should go - so please do join in the conversation with a comment in the box below.

𖥸 Further reading ::

I mention three books on the call. 1. Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls by Mona Eltahawy, 2. The Myth of Normal by Daniel Maté and Dr Gabor MatéMaté writes about how suppression of emotion very often has a somatic impact.

3. Jessie’s latest book MotherShift, Reclaiming Motherhood as a Rite of Passage, which is a wonderful guide for new mothers navigating the cascade of identity change and transformation that is motherhood and in which Jessie explores how anger might manifest in these early years.

If you’d like to listen back and read back over previous Element Sessions content, head HERE for all we’ve covered so far. Ok friends, I really hope you enjoy this conversation, and as I said I’d love to hear what it sparks up in you ! Share in the comments below.

Layla xx

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Hello friends and welcome to week 2 of our REST series.

This week, I’m delighted to share with you a conversation I had recently with coach, mentor and writer Lauren Barber about Human Design. I wanted to share with you my experiences of discovering and integrating this powerful way of understanding our energy into my life, and have Lauren explain to us what Human Design is, how it works and how it can be useful for us in terms of being more easeful in our lives.

It felt really appropriate to have this conversation during the REST series, because for me, understanding how to best use and align with my unique energy has been a gamechanger in terms of how rested I feel in my day to day life. I’m working with myself, rather than battling myself day to day. I don’t run myself into the ground any more doing what I feel I ‘should’. I am better at knowing what suits me, how to find flow. The relief in this has been enormous and has impacted my creativity, my relationships, my working life.

Human Design was reminding me who I was before I had become so consumed by what I thought the world wanted me to be.- Lauren Barber -

Here’s how Lauren describes Human Design:Human Design, to me, is a map of our true selves, I use it very much as a tool of remembrance, mirroring to us our innate qualities and gifts to enable us to operate in the world in our most magnetic and magical way.[…] On a more intellectual level, Human Design is known as the science of differentiation. It emphasises our uniqueness and how each of us are designed to show up and operate in the world in our own way. The system itself is a combination of Quantum Physics, Eastern and Western Astrology, the Chinese, I’Ching, The Kabbalah and the Hindu Chakra System.

I really hope you enjoy this conversation. Let me know in the comments what has been sparked for you? Have you used Human Design in your life? Or what other systems and frameworks have helpful you feel more easeful in your creative life, your work, your day to day life? Do share, I’d love to know. To keep up to date with what I have coming up for January and February here at beauty & bone head to my Membership Hub.

Layla x

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Hello friends,

The morning after the conversation I had with Easkey Britton about the power of WATER for the Element Sessions she emailed me to say that she had woken with a sense she wanted to share a little more with us all around the healing and holding power of water when it comes to grief and loss.

She offered to share with us a practical embodiment practice, a water ritual, as a way to honour our loss and express our grief, a way to be with our heartbreak, which has been immense for us as a species this last year and personally for each of us in many different ways.

And so a few days later we met again and recorded this beautiful offering. Easkey explores how our relationship with grief is closely associated with ebb, a sense of withdrawing inward, a feeling of emptiness, a sense of murkiness. How neither ebb nor grief are valued or allowed space in our society. How the process of grieving is one of making space for what wants to emerge.

She speaks about water as a holding element. As a memory keeper. How so many world myths around loss and death and grief involve water, how today this continues in rituals such as the paddle out ceremonies of surfers and other ocean going people.

She shares here a simple yet powerful way of creating one’s own water ritual, which can be supportive as a way of honouring a loved one, a loss within ourselves, a loss in our world and is also a way to enhance your connection with the water.

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The Element Sessions Podcast | WATER with Dr Easkey Britton

I recorded this conversation with writer, big wave surfer & social ecologist Dr.Easkey Britton a number of weeks ago. I can honestly say that the time since I spoke with her has been different. I’ve engaged with the water around me in a different way, I’ve placed myself in and beside bodies of water more often, I’ve thought about my relationship to water, within myself and, rippling out, within the planet we call home, in a deeper, more present way. I am so excited to share this chat with you, and look forward to hearing what impact what we speak about has for you, too.

I was speaking to Easkey for the fourth episode of the Element Sessions and we were exploring the Element of Water, which is connected in Chinese Medicine with the season of Winter, into which we are stepping across the threshold into here in Ireland right now. Next Friday I’ll be sharing our Deep Dive into the Water Element, but I can’t think of a better place to begin feeling into this Element than with an hour spent listening to Easkey speak about it’s profound impact and the powers it holds.

Easkey Britton is a pioneering marine social scientist, surfer, writer, and ocean advocate with a PhD in Environment and Society. Her research explores the intricate relationships between humans and nature, focusing on the health and wellbeing benefits of engaging with water environments. Britton combines science, art, and activism to address social and environmental challenges.

Through her books, such as Ebb and Flow and Saltwater in the Blood, she uses storytelling to make scientific concepts more accessible. Her work empowers women, fosters cross-cultural connections, and advocates for environmental and social change, drawing on her deep connection to the ocean.

On this call Easkey shares :

𓇸 Her own remarkable, life long connection with bodies of water, from stepping onto a surfboard at age 4, to being named after a wave, to how her own life course has been profoundly influenced by her naming and connection to the water.

𓇸 We talked about what it feels like to surf a 20 foot + wave, particularly as a woman, how she has learnt that there must be a dance between the masculine and feminine energies, of the lessons in surrender, letting go and opening that the waves have taught her. I loved how Easkey spoke about a ‘water mind’, or ‘blue mind’, that she has developed over a life time in the water.

𓇸 We spoke about thresholds, intertidal zones, ecotones and about our relationship with fear when it comes to water, as well as the importance, so often overlooked in our lives, as well as in what we see of surfing, of the ebb before the flow state arrives.

𓇸 Easkey spoke so powerfully about the connection between our own amniotic fluid and that of salt water, and of the sense of belonging and homecoming that water imbues in us. She spoke about the ways that water holds us, as well as the ways that our having a relationship with bodies of water help us to engage in a far more felt-sense way with the climate crises and other often hard to grapple with crises and issues.

And, oh my, we spoke about so much more. I’ll stop typing now and let you go and listen to this conversation, I feel so delighted I’m getting to share it with you all! Below you’ll find links to Easkey’s two beautiful books, her website and an upcoming event she has next year. Next week I’ll also be sharing a really profound gift that Easkey has offered to us all - a practical embodiment, a water ritual, as a way to honour our loss and express our grief, a way to be with our heartbreak, which, as she writes ‘… has been immense for us as a species this last year and personally for each of us different ways.’ Please do subscribe to receive this gift next week.

You can find out more about Easkey’s work On her website https://easkeybritton.comOn Instagram @easkeysurf You can find out more about her books hereAnd she is hosting a new retreat in March 2025! - find out more here.

For more on the Element Sessions, head to my page www.laylaomara.substack.com

Layla x

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Hi friends,

{ words below are mostly penned by the wondrous wordsmith Lindsay Johnstone ! }We wanted to get this out to you ASAP so you can dig in over the weekend. This is the second part of our chat inspired by All Fours by Miranda July, which far more famous women than us implore you to read :

We talk about leaning in to the messiness of midlife; fear of what’s going on inside our bodies; our relationship to our sexual bodies and how midlife offers us an opportunity to (re)discover who we are and what we like. This post from Celeste Davis was mentioned more than once in the chat:

We dig into what it feels like to emerge from the oestrogen fug - what Dr. Susan Hardwick Smith calls the veil of oestrogen - and recognise that the mothering / caring part of us is evolving.

What can we / do we expect from grandmothers, too? The chat was on fire over maternal burnout and whether it breeds future generations of grandmothers who will be less available when there are (more) small people to take care of.

We talk about the conflicting information we’ve been told about testing for perimenopause and HRT and the complex landscape of women’s health generally, which can make it so hard to know what treatments to try to manage symptoms… Do we need to become our own doctor, too, as well as Jill-of-all-other-trades? One recommendation if you’re interested in going down a specific medical peri rabbit hole is The Menopause Brain by Dr. Louise Mosconi. And if you’re looking for a Substack to follow, Dr. Jen Gunter writes The Vagenda. Over on Instagram, check out The Menopause Sisters,Dr. Mary Clare Havers and Dr. Stacy Sims.

Lindsay’s hugely popular most about losing her orgasm has a wealth of advice in the comments:

And I share some thought about taking HRT in this post :

as well as some thought on returning to my body after my hysterectomy here:

Oh, also. We’re all moving to the Vale of Oestrogen which we have decided is a bucolic resort somewhere on the beautiful south-east coast of Wales.

If you’d like to continue the conversation, jump in to the comments, or head to this thread:

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Hello dear friends,

I’m sending this video by way of both introduction, and also as a way of telling you a little more about why I’m here on Substack, what my intentions for the beauty & bone community are and most importantly how I want this space to feel.

I’ve a special offer running until midnight tonight for my membership (GMT, Nov 9). The offer is for €20 a year for as long as you subscribe versus the usual €50. I will be putting my prices up next year (but you’ll still pay €20).

To get more of a feel for the membership, you can also check out my Membership Hub, but do come back for this offer, as it expires soon and I won’t run another at this price point again!

And for those of you who’ve watched the video - here is me an hour ago, SOAKED and filthy and happy as a gal can be!

Layla xx

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OK, let’s dive in to the second spiral of the Element Sessions, which is exploring

M E T A L

The Metal Element is connected to the season of Autumn, to a shedding, releasing, letting go. It is a deeply powerful time of the year. It was said in ancient China that the emperor would wait until Metal season to decide on which prisoners were to be release and which executed, because there was the greatest access to discernment and truth at this time. It is a a time of release, of return, of respect.

I wanted to begin this spiral by sharing a deep and wonderful conversation I had just yesterday with my dear friend and wisdom weaver Mari Kennedy. Mari is an Irish Celtic cyclical guide, a map maker and a global gatherer of women. Her passion is evolution, in particular of ‘women and our relationship to power and wisdom at this wild messy bewildering edge of evolution’. 

Mari grew up in the ‘70s and ‘80s in the West of Ireland at a time when most of us didn't question anything. She was the archetypal "high achieving good girl." In her late 30s, the Cailleach, the great Dark Feminine force in the Celtic tradition, upended her life. As Mari writes:

‘the Cailleach dragged me kicking and screaming onto the Path of Sovereignty, where she showed me that...I wasn’t in my bodyI didn’t have myselfI wasn't using my gifts. I was disconnected from nature I was playing small to stay secure...’

𓇸 We talk in this conversation about how Mari climbed back into her body and started to weave a new way of life.

𓇸 We talk about our avoidance and fear of the darkness, and of how we can with tenderness begin to move towards it more.

𓇸 We talk about our relationship to failure and vulnerability, about how uncomfortable with not knowing, with messiness and disruption.

𓇸 We talk about the collective Samhain and death our planet is going through at the moment and how the Celtic Wheel can help us navigate these times.

It was such a powerful, truthful and moving conversation with a dear friend and a woman who I know will open your heart to a radically new way of being.

You can find Mari on Instagram @marikennedywisdom or at www.marikennedy.com.

This is the first part of the METAL spiral. Here’s what’s coming up for the remainder of the spiral :

M E T A L Element Sessions

𖥸 Friday 1 November : Podcast will land in your inboxes with wisdom weaver Mari Kennedy (free for all subscribers)

𖥸 Friday 8 November : Deep Dive written post into the M E T A L Element will land in your inboxes (free preview, then access to paid subscribers)

𖥸 Thursday 14 November : 10:30-11:30am GMT: M E T A L live call (Paid subscribers). You’ll receive a link to the Zoom the day before, recording available).

Energetically connected, I’m also offering this series of four gatherings towards the end of the year.

Chatting to some of you on the last Element Sessions call, I was struck by the value of simply committing to sit for an hour together and write, pause, think, create. I extend an invitation to you all to sit with me for 4 early mornings towards the end of the year and do just that. I’m picturing a womb-space, a dark, warm holding space for us all.

Details are

𖥸 6-7am GMT𖥸 Friday 29 Nov, 6 Dec, 13 Dec, 20 Dec𖥸 On Zoom, I’ll send the link the day before. Will not be recorded.𖥸 Free to all paid subscribers

Layla xx

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Myself, Caro Giles, Lindsay Johnstone and Chloe George thoroughly enjoyed this thought-provoking chat, with a wonderful gathering of well over 30 of you, about how we are feeling at this wild time of mid-life.

We’d all read and adored Miranda July’s All Fours, and thought it would be a wonderful spring board from which to explore so many of the experiences we find ourselves having in our 40’s.

We spoke candidly about how we are feeling in our bodies now in our 40’s, what we are not ready to let go of, what we are grieving, what bothers us less, our motivations for taking care of ourselves now versus back in our twenties. We explored the idea of the male gaze, of how inescapable it feels almost despite ourselves …

We talked about being seen, about our fear of being invisible.

We talked about how hard it can be to navigate the transition between being a vibrant, sexual woman and the duties of domestic life and motherhood.

We talked about what awakenings we’ve had in our 40’s, and wondered whether there is more to come.

We didn’t get to speak enough about how the female body is seen, how this changes, or about anger and rage, or about HRT pros and cons. We didn’t talk enough about creativity or domesticity or what kind of older women we hope to become.

I’m fairly certain we’ll be doing more of these chats - they were fun, they were eye-opening, they felt helpful, they felt good to do and feedback from all of you seems to signal the same…. so watch this space! And do let us know in the comments below what you thought of our conversation, and what else you’d like to hear us discuss.

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I started taking HRT about two months ago. I was quite cross about starting to take it. I felt a little ashamed about it. A little bit like I’d failed. I’m also feeling remarkably, annoyingly, pretty great on it. I’d be lying if I said this didn’t piss me off quite a bit.

A voice recording of a post in which I explain why....

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