Andrew Pacholyk: Spiritual Journey through Life’s Seasons
VICTOR FUHRMAN: One of the things in my own healing practice was before you enter someone else’s field, their energy field, you absolutely have to be totally clear and let go of anything that you may have experienced earlier that day, or that week, or whatever is going on in your life that is not absolutely positive. Is that something you encourage your students to do?
ANDREW PACHOLYK: Yes, I think that’s great advice because we bring so much in with us whenever we walk into a room or we walk into a place, or we come home. Everything we’ve gathered in our mind and in our heart physically or in our body tends to stay with us, so releasing that is a great practice, and you can do that during meditation.
VICTOR FUHRMAN: Andrew, what inspired you to write Your Book “Lead Us to a Place”?
ANDREW PACHOLYK: I probably had an idea to write a book 10 years ago and just had so much information I just didn’t really know how to categorize it; how to bring it all together. Then one day I was actually looking through an old textbook and realized that the seasons were at the basis of so much of my healing and the healing experiences that I thought that would make a great foundation for the book.
VICTOR FUHRMAN: What are the seasons and stages of our lives?
ANDREW PACHOLYK: Basically, the seasons are looked at in four categories, and the new beginning of spring usually represents our coming of age in our teens and twenties, when we start to unearth that raw energy of who we are through our own personal beauty and intuition and sexual self-esteem that our creative forces awaken. I classify the summer as our thirties and forties because that’s when we develop our own persona by discovering more about love and luck and confidence as we gain more success and we understand more of what our own happiness really is. The fall of our lives tends to be in the fifties and sixties when our lives help us to realize how forgiveness and knowledge and prosperous journeys give us enriching experiences, so we’re often more conscious by this point in our lives and tend to acknowledge our gratitude and find a bit more humility and enjoy our prosperity. So, the winter looks more like the seventies and upwards in our lives, and we tend to look within. We find a more introspective time that gives us the golden opportunity for self-powers of healing and self-balance.
VICTOR FUHRMAN: What’s fascinating to me is that even when I was a child, up to today, the fall is my favorite season. Why would you think that would be so?
ANDREW PACHOLYK: That’s interesting. I think you’re probably drawn to the balance of light which is just the opposite of spring. The temperature or the colors are what you were probably always attracted to. I always say forgiveness and knowledge and prosperity and prosperous journeys tend to be that of the fall personality. That’s true for you.
VICTOR FUHRMAN: I think you’ve touched upon that very nicely. There’s something about the changing of the foliage, the leaves, and the colors. The golds and the reds and the browns of the autumn season are just so appealing to me. Now how may we attune our bodies to both nature’s seasons and life’s seasons?
ANDREW PACHOLYK: Well, I tend to look at nature as kind of a key or a clue in the process because of the Chinese look at the seasons as something that we endure on the outside, but actually what we experience in our bodies on the inside. So, nature holds the key to even diagnosis process in Chinese medicine. As with fall, there is dampness; as with winter, there is cold. In summer there is heat. These are all things that our body experiences internally as well. So, trying to align these with the seasons helps keep our body in check or more in the balance as we go.
VICTOR FUHRMAN: What elements in nature are applied to each of these seasons?
ANDREW PACHOLYK: In Chinese medicine, there are five elements. There is a five-element theory where wood is one of the elements. In my book, I kept it to the Greek elements, air, earth, fire, and water. So, a lot of times nature again shows us when these elements are in balance, then our bodies tend to be in balance. When they are out of control, it mirrors what can happen inside our body as well.
VICTOR FUHRMAN: Are there specific herbs that apply to each of the seasons? What are some of the herbs, for example, that are associated with our current season?
ANDREW PACHOLYK: Yes, there are, and each season has herbs and essential oils that can really benefit the body based on the season. For instance, in the summer we tend to want to use cooling herbs, cooling foods, to help keep the body at an internal temperature that’s comfortable and cool and just the opposite in the winter. In the fall, we tend to go toward herbs that are more warming, like cinnamon and cardamom. These herbs have a warming effect. Ginger, as well, can be very soothing during the transition from summer to fall and then fall into winter.
VICTOR FUHRMAN: Now, in “Lead Us to a Place – Your Spiritual Journey through Life’s Seasons,” you talk a lot about the connection between self-knowledge and our spiritual path. What is that connection?
ANDREW PACHOLYK: Well, I have found that the more that we know about ourselves brings us closer to our own spiritual path, or spiritual learning. Learning about who we are as a person, our likes and dislikes, how we react to things and how we handle situations, helps us to be more conscious. These things help us to be more aware of our situation and how we interact with other people.
VICTOR FUHRMAN: Andrew, You discussed this connection between nature, our bodies, and the seasonal elements. Please give us another couple of examples of what elements are connected with the seasons and how they affect us.
ANDREW PACHOLYK: Yes. It’s interesting because each season has its own particular element and, for instance, in springtime, spring is also associated with the air. For example, utilizing the element of air should lead you to a new place in your life. It tends to be what we do in spring, going with the flow, accessing different ideas and concepts that come your way. This is what air does, and the air is associated with the springtime. Summer, on the other hand, is associated with fire. Fire is that go-get-it kind of spirit, and it’s the element that pushes through everything and shows us how we do things in a very fast and furious kind of motion. The element of fall is probably one of my favorites, and that’s earth, probably because I need to be grounded all the time and I tend not to be. So, the earth is associated with the late-summer season or early fall. It’s associated with the spleen and the stomach in Chinese medicine, and physically earth is the source and provider of all our needs.
VICTOR FUHRMAN: I know that you say in your book that in the winter one of the areas of personal growth is coming to terms with the understanding of death. How do you describe that?
ANDREW PACHOLYK: Well, it’s something that we all have to endure in time, and at one point or another, and coming to terms with death is a realization that brings us to the forefront of our hard reality. When someone’s passing, expectations become evident, and the process of letting go these expectations is probably one of the hardest lessons that we have to learn.
VICTOR FUHRMAN: How do intention, intuition, and self-awareness bring us closer to our spiritual journey? Is there a tool or a technique that people can use to clarify and focus their intention?
ANDREW PACHOLYK: Our intention is the path that we put before us, it’s the seed we plant. Then, using the intuition, which is our absolute ability to censor and know immediately that something in your soul, these tools help with our self-awareness. Self-awareness is that change that you can perceive or that you can participate in if your intention is correct. You change the way that you look at something by your intention, and you follow that through with your intuition. So, this is how it leads us to a more spiritual awakening or a path. With intention, you’re basically setting your ground rule or planting that seed, your reason for doing something. So, with your intention in place, you can use the air around you to breathe in, to root you into the ground, or the food to help you grow, which would be your thoughts and how you choose to nourish that seed with those thoughts. Then the water element of this is your ability to flow and let go of that after you’ve set your intention and then you let it go to magnetize your purpose, to bring it back to you.
VICTOR FUHRMAN: How important is a visualization of the goal to intention?
Continue to Page 3 of the Interview with Andrew Pacholyk
