Which element predominates in your personality? For myself, I relish the Water Element. It governs my favorite times of day, those misterious moments between waking and sleeping, the transitions in time and space. I love dawn, but I love dusk even better. And how my soul soars in response to the vision of a huge body of water, be it the ocean, a river, or a lake. Now I understand why.

As a child, I spent hours in the water. I didn't swim exactly, but I would play and swirl like a mermaid, around and around, up and down. Yet, I am even more drawn to the complete tranquility of water. My brothers and I grew up in an appartment on a hill overlooking the largest lake in Europe. I loved also the way I could see the turbulance of the storms arising hours in advance, slowly crossing the river, often arising in Austria, making their way over Germany to cross into Switzerland where we lived from the northeast. On a clear day you could see France to the west.

Water signifies wholeness, hence my obsession with integration. (Joy, oh joy! It's not because I'm fractured - it's because water is the predominant element of my personality!) Water is formless, a medium that can carry us between worlds. No wonder I don't relate very well to keeping time! Water is the perfect environment for gestation, the culmination of the creative process has it's first inception here.

In those quiet times when we are resting, renewing ourselves, the water element prevails. As we learn to put ourselves mindfully into a state of receptivity, we enter the water element. This is exactly where I love to be and exactly why I teach this process to others, it's the greatest gift I can think to give because it brings such clarity, such creative impetuousness, such open fulfilment!

In the human life cycle, water rules death and dying, the release from all care, hence my serious side. It rules that moment of clarity when it all makes sense, when chaos is revealed as the ultimate exquisit pattern. It's spiritual aspect is the collective consciousness we all share. We are in this thing together and isn't it beautiful?