Episode 46. Marlow Brooks: Dancing with the Five Elements

The newest episode of our podcast, Mindful U at Naropa University, is out on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and Fireside now! We are happy to announce this week’s episode features Marlow Brooks, adjunct faculty in Naropa’s BA in Contemplative Psychology program.

  Marlow Brooks: Dancing Through Life with the Five Elements

Marlow Brooks teaches a class about the human predicament of being very diverse and celebrating differences. For instance, a fire-type person likes to be out in the sun, likes heat, likes passion. Hot, firey people want to lead. They have great senses of humor, and great heart, but they are prone to burning themselves out. Consider a water type person—a personality like winter, being in the depths under the ground, or like a ball on the ground, gathering potency, gathering wisdom. For them to go into situations with loads of fire might feel extremely threatening. Many people that show a propensity for water think they are depressed, or that they are too serious. This class is about learning to accept yourself and then learning to accept the differences in others. Every organism really has different ways of coming into its own. The compassionate approach is to give that organism the type of elemental energy that will nurture them into the person that they will, or that they could, become.

Marlow Brooks studied classical acupuncture in both England and the United States and graduated from the Worsley Institute of Classical Acupuncture. She studied plant spirit medicine with Eliot Cowan. Marlow maintains a private healing practice and teaches workshops and yearlong apprenticeships in five-element healing and plant spirit medicine. She became a student of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, in 1975 while attending the Naropa Institute. She maintains a private healing practice in Boulder, CO, and teaches workshops locally and internationally in Five-Element Healing, Plant Spirit Healing, and Chinese calligraphy.