The Shamanic Power Of October: Transmuting Your Energy With Five Elements

How to clear and cleanse your energy with earth, air, fire, water, and light during the most powerful month of transformation. And a personal story of loss.

My young mother died in an accidental fire 48 years ago this month.

It was Devil’s Night in Southwest Detroit. October 30th, 1978. I was 10 months old. My grandfather, living in the apartment below, was home that night, smelled the smoke, and by the grace of the Divine found the strength to carry me and my older sisters out of from our upper unit apartment. Sadly, my mother didn’t make it out.

I’m not sharing this to pull at your heartstrings. I’m sharing it because the first smell of a fall bonfire activates something in me every October, and this year I finally have words for it.

October is the month of transformation. The leaves change and fall, the harvest ends, and the old Samhain bonfires mark this same turning, the time when something dies so something new can be born.

The fire that took my mother is the one I light with purpose, every single day.

When I sat down to write this week’s article, I did what I always do. I went into the Akashic Records and asked my Guides what my readers needed to hear right now.

It didn’t look the way it usually does. I climbed a path of lit marble stairs, passing fountains that poured down like rivers from above. I walked through an enormous arched doorway flooded with light, and I was led to a fountain like the kind you’d find in the middle of a big city center but quieter. I was asked to step in.

So I did. Water poured over me from above and cleansed me from the outside in.

I thought right away of this month’s channeled message, which asked us to cleanse our energy with water and to work with the violet flame of transmutation. (Two elements in one message, and I’d just been dropped into one of them.)

Water has always been my reset button. I’ve lived lakeside for 25 years and can’t picture a home without it outside my back door. When I travel, I go find it, whether that’s the ocean in Costa Rica or the turquoise sea in Greece. I feel held in water. I sink into a hot Epsom salt bath with the blinds open just enough for a stripe of sunshine to land on my face, and something in me comes back online. It’s as if something within me is being reprogrammed.

You may be wondering what my mother’s death and a fountain in the Records have to do with each other. Stick with me. I’m about to show you.

Fire and water. Two elements that look like opposites, and both have been in my life since before I could walk.

Standing in that fountain, I felt my body let go and soften like a sweet surrender to a power outside of my own knowing. Nobody was asking me to relive the loss. I was being invited to work with what fire can do. Fire ends things, yes. It’s also the oldest transformer we know, the element that turns one form into another. Death and rebirth live in the same flame.

That’s transmutation: handing the heaviest thing you’ve been carrying to the element that has the ability to change it.

I don’t think I’m the only one feeling this. So many of you have told me something is percolating under the surface right now that you can’t name yet. The Records showed me we’re in a time of big transition on Earth, and we’ve been given the elements to move through it. We can use them to turn pain into pleasure and tragedy into triumph, and to alchemize the old, stagnant energy we’ve been clinging to without even realizing it.

Shamanism and the elements

The word Shaman traces back to the Evenki people of northern Siberia, where saman is said to mean “to know” or “to heat”. To know and to heat. Those are the Records and a candle flame, right there in one word. The idea of Shamanism became widely popular by historian Mircea Eliade’s 1951 book, translated into English in 1964, and while scholars still debate how much he lumped together, evidence of Shamanic practices goes as far back as 40,000 years. Many lineages around the world, from the Andes to Mexico, have worked with nature and non-ordinary reality as partners in healing and transmutation. Bringing something to a zero point.

Five elements, not four

Toltec Shaman Don José Ruiz teaches the medicine wheel and its association with earth, air, fire, and water, and reminds us we are connected through the air we breathe, the ground beneath our feet, and the water that makes up 60%-75% of our bodies. Sandra Ingerman, one of the best-known Shamanic teachers in the West, writes about transmutation, the ancient art of transforming toxic substances into safe ones, which she says appears across the world’s spiritual traditions. She also teaches that toxic thoughts can do as much damage as toxic chemicals.

So the elements are partners in the work, not just poetry. Your body is made of them, which is why they can change what’s stuck and stagnant in you.

Earth. You’ve heard the advice to walk barefoot in the grass. Skin on the ground lets the Earth’s electrons settle into your system; it’s called earthing or grounding. There is evidence that it causes better and deeper sleep, less pain, and my personal experience has been a feeling of renewed energy and being naturally uplifted. It’s like nature’s eraser of my mind and body. When people say go hug a tree, it’s because the tree is a living, sentient being that holds earth energy that reignites the senses and connects you with the balance of nature.

Air. Breath is the element I respect most, partly because I’ve lived with life-threatening asthma my whole life. The breath is a vital life force. It’s chi in Chinese medicine and prana in Sanskrit. If you’re not breathing, you’re dying. I even have an infinity sign, a heart, and the word breathe tattooed on my right wrist. Probably the one and only tattoo I’ll ever have. This represents the whole cycle of eternal life.

In Shamanism, the wind is the messenger that carries your prayers up to Spirit and clears what’s stagnant. The first breathwork I learned in my Shamanic training was nadi shodhana, alternate nostril breathing, which is used to attune your energy before entering altered states. Alternate nostril breathing can clear stagnant and lower frequencies as well and bring you back to a zero point energetically.

Fire. Fire is the element of the violet flame, the practice this month’s transmission asked us to work with. Light a purple candle, name what you’re ready to release, such as grief or anger, or anything that is keeping you stuck. Could be a belief that is keeping you hidden or small. Really anything. And let the flame transmute it into a higher vibration. I light my purple candle at my desk every day to call in benevolent beings. The flicker of the flame and the illumination of purple signify renewal, hope, and pure potential.

Water. Water is the one I could talk about for hours. There’s a study I find fascinating.

Japanese researcher Masaru Emoto spent years exposing water to words and music, freezing it, and photographing the resulting crystals under a microscope. He reported that water exposed to loving words froze into more orderly, symmetrical crystals, bringing it into coherence. In 2006, he teamed up with researcher Dean Radin on a double-blind version. About 2,000 people in Tokyo focused a prayer of gratitude, led by Emoto, toward water sitting in a shielded room at the Institute of Noetic Sciences in California, some 5,000 miles away. The samples were then sent to Emoto’s lab in Japan. The water was frozen, and the crystals were photographed, and judges who didn’t know which was which rated them. The crystals from the water that received the loving intention were found to be significantly more beautiful than the others.

And something else that is really cool is that there is evidence that exposure to lakes, rivers, and seas is linked to better mental health and well-being. After 25 years living lakeside, I sign off on this proof.

Light. This is my favorite to work with, and the one people leave off the list. I work in the Records because it’s made of light, and in my Angelic Reiki sessions, I call on the loving energy of Source Light to help heal my clients.

Using light as a healing tool and as medicine isn’t just in my imagination. Hospitals use it too. Photodynamic therapy uses a light to kill cancer cells, and it’s approved for esophageal cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, and some skin cancers, as well as some others. I’m not trying to convince you that Reiki treats cancer, and nothing here replaces medical care but I am telling you light does something to living tissue, and medicine is still figuring this out. Another one that I can completely get on board with.

Much of my light work happens in non-ordinary reality, the realm entered through journeying, meditation, or by accessing the Akashic Records. So you may be wondering…is it real? A University of Michigan study put 24 Shamanic practitioners and 24 controls under EEG during drumming, and the Shamanic practitioners showed a distinct altered state with increased gamma activity, one that overlaps with the psychedelic state but without substances. Proof that work inside the theta state is real and accessible. I can only speak from my own experience and my clients’. It takes a willingness, an opening to the channel or quantum field, and some trust that the light is doing what light does. Healing what is out of balance and bringing it back to coherence.

October is asking you to let something burn, and the old, stagnant energy you’ve been carrying without knowing it is ready to go. Every element is available to you right now as a partner. Give it a try and notice what shifts. And transmutation doesn’t skip over what’s been heavy and stuck. At its core, it works to finally release it for good. That’s the power of your intention. That’s the power of alchemy.

Here’s what I’m doing with it this month

I bless my water. I hold my 32-ounce Yeti in one hand and send Reiki and light into it with the other, while I speak prayers and mantras of gratitude and love into the water. My Guides suggested this daily ritual and it’s become one of my favorites so far this month. And as usual, there is an Epsom salt bath somewhere on the calendar this month. Maybe two.

I’m working with the violet flame on a wound that I have held for lifetimes, around my voice and my sense of safety speaking my truth. That one runs deep, and I’ll take you into it in a future article. For now, I’ll just say that when something comes up, I light the candle, name it, and hand it to the flame.

Here are four ways to try it yourself this month. Pick whichever one calls to you. Or even give them all a go.

• Bless your water. Hold a glass in one hand and rest the other over it. Send it gratitude and light, say what you’d like it to do for your body, and drink it slowly, allowing the blessings to fill you up from the inside.

• Box Breathing. Inhale for 4, hold for 4, exhale for 4, hold for 4. Do five rounds. Don’t force the air to move; just allow it to saturate your body and system.

• Light a purple flame. Light a purple candle (any candle works). Name what you’re ready to bring to zero point, picture placing it in the flame, and watch it change. Stay with the candle while it burns. If you don’t have a physical purple candle, I get mine on Amazon 2 day shipping, you can imagine the candle and violet flame in your meditation. It works just as well as if it were sitting on your desk in front of you.

• Touch the ground. Get your bare feet on grass, soil, or sand for 10 minutes. It’s cold in October, so bundle up and take whatever time you can. And if you’re like me, living in the Midwest, visit an apple orchard, get your hands in the dirt by picking some fresh apples or pumpkins.

To my mother, wherever the light has taken you: I feel you every October. This month I’m honoring you by lighting a flame and standing in the water. The fire that ended your life taught me what transformation looks like, and I’m so grateful for the breath and life you’ve given me.

If anything in this stirred something in you, that’s not a coincidence. That’s your soul asking for more.

If you’re not sure where to start, take the Soul Signal Assessment at nikkiheals.com/free-quiz. It takes a few minutes and shows you where you are in your own remembering.

All my love,
Nikki K

Which element are you being called to work with, and what do you think it’s asking of you? Tell me in the comments; I’d love to know.

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If you missed it, the October Akashic Record channeled transmission has been released and is ready for you.