August arrives and with it come reports of increasingly widespread wildfires. In fact, this year – 2026 – as I sit to write this morning, the fires are like nothing we have experienced before. It really is as if the planet is on fire. As it seems like this is going to be a regular state of affairs now with shifting climate patterns, my deep prayer as I write this piece is that if you are reading this in August of another year, you will not be seeing the same displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, the devastation of their homes, of nature, agriculture and wildlife. The suffering and destruction are heartbreaking.

It has caused me to remember with the positive anticipation that the year of the fire horse was greeted this year. Beautiful graphics of horses filled our social media feeds, leaving many of us eager for the passion, momentum, and bright promise that the fire horse seemed to hold.

What I have been led to remember through some recent difficult months in my own life is a fundamental truth of fire: it does not choose what it illuminates; it simply intensifies whatever is already there. And, as these cosmic forces impact the collective as well as the individual, fire years are symbolically tied to an increased risk of physical heat events, social friction, and volatility,

Astrologers and commentators often link the hyper-charged fire element in fire years to real-world conditions like extreme heat, droughts, and elevated wildfire risks.

Today we see that intensity expressed in the most devastating way as newsreels report on unprecedented wildfires raging across our planet, destroying ancient ecosystems, taking people and innocent animals with them. Fire burns indiscriminately, finding fuel in whatever lies in its path.

Even when we watch this destruction from afar, I am sure it brings a deep, collective heartache that touches us all and a stark, macrocosmic warning. I recognised something of it in my Yoga class the other night.

“We are due another heatwave” one lady said. There were not the usual responses – groans from those who struggle with the heat and glee from those who thrive in it. There was a poignant silence for a moment. And a sad knowingness on the faces in front of me perhaps recognising that the extreme heat patterns we are experiencing are something to be concerned about as they show themselves in full force across our planet in the form of fires raging out of control.

We can feel helpless to effect change as we look upon apocalyptic-style scenes of soaring flames and clouds of smoke, of burning homes and fleeing animals and people on our TV screens. It looks as if the dice are already cast and we have reached the point of no return.

However, my friends, let us not buy into the belief that things are a fait accompli.  Climate scientists and activists reject “climate doomists”. They tell us that it is not too late to repair the damage or halt more, and that collapse is not inevitable. Every fraction of a degree of warming that we prevent, they say, directly translates to fewer wildfires, preserved ecosystems, and saved lives.

And so here are a few things we can do in our own individual lives:

• Switch bank accounts. Move your money away from major banks that fund fossil fuel expansion to eco-ethical providers like Triodos or Co-operative Bank.
• Switch energy provider. Choose a truly green energy supplier that invests directly in building new wind and solar infrastructure. Good Energy, Octopus Energy, Ecotricity and 100Green are examples of UK suppliers.
• Reduce meat and dairy consumption. Swap a few meals a week for plant-based choices, drastically lowering the demand for deforesting agricultural land.
• Cut out fast fashion. Buy high-quality, pre-loved clothes or repair what you have, reducing the high-carbon footprint of global textile manufacturing.
• Insulate your living space: Install draft excluders, heavy curtains, or loft insulation to dramatically lower your home energy use.

In our local areas, as communities we can:

 Create a community garden. Transform a patch of disused local land or a concrete space into a green oasis filled with plants to naturally lower urban heat.

Plant native street trees: Join or lobby local council and charitable tree-planting initiatives to create vital shade and natural cooling blocks for your neighbourhood.

Support local rewilding schemes. Volunteer with a nearby wildlife trust to restore wetlands and meadows, which act as natural carbon sinks and water buffers.

Organise neighbourhood carpools. Set up shared transport or carpooling groups for school runs and commutes to reduce local traffic emissions.

Set up a community repair café. Start a monthly meetup where neighbours help each other fix broken appliances and clothes, keeping items out of landfills.

There are so many more small ways that we can help. I am sure you have ideas to add to these lists. And whilst these small ways may not seem like much in the face of major environmental catastrophes, they all add up and do make a difference.

With small consistent acts we need not lose faith and doubt that anything can affect change now. I like to always remember the starfish story, cited in earlier pages, when I start to fall into the mindset of it’s too late and nothing can be done. Do you remember it? One little boy started throwing starfish stranded in their thousands on the beach, one by one back into the sea. He was told he couldn’t make a difference. And yet gradually, as he was joined by others, all the starfish were placed safely back in the water.

This story holds a second teaching for me. Not only that each of us can make a difference, but that, just as so many people cared enough to join that one little boy, despite all the difficult stories that fill our news each day, the human heart is fundamentally good.

We love this planet. We love life. We love nature. Deep within us is a natural desire to care, to protect and to preserve – for the sake of the earth itself and for the generations who will follow us. When someone has the courage to take the first step and show us what is possible, many of us are willing to follow. Small acts of care have a remarkable way of awakening the same impulse in others, until together they become something far greater than any one person could have achieved alone.

Have you not been moved by the brave and selfless acts of professionals and civilians across the planet, risking their lives to save others – two legged, four legged, winged? T has certainly moved me to tears.

I recall reading a book many years ago about a man who travelled to Columbia to meet a group of indigenous people who had lived – by choice – cut off from the so-called civilised world. The book was called “Heart of the World” and it was by the British film-maker Alan Ereira. He lived for some time with these people, the Kogi. When they broke their silence to speak to the world, with Alan Ereira as their medium, they did not blame or condemn us for the environmental costs of our way of life. Instead, they expressed an amazing compassion towards us. They called our civilisation “younger brother”. To these people, we are like reckless youths who are completely unaware of the widespread consequences of their actions.

If the Kogi help us recognise our reckless environmental history as the unconscious acts of an immature younger siblings, another ancient tradition provides the roadmap for how we might hope to mature. Long before our society began fracturing the biosphere, the elders and leaders of a native American Indian operated a “Haudenosaunee Confederacy” held themselves to a particularly enlightened way of ensuring their decisions and actions supported a harmonious society. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy was a kind of early participatory democracy, formed centuries before European colonisers arrived in North America. It was built to end brutal wars and operated under a sacred mandate known as the Seventh Generation Principle which would benefit the whole world should our global leaders choose to lead by it. By this principle, before any new law could be passed or major community decision made, the council was required to look far beyond the immediate effects of that law or decision. They would ask “How will this action impact our children seven generations from now?” If the long-term effect was adverse, the change was rejected.

If only our leaders – political and industrial – could adopt such a leadership.

This is surely the kind of medicine that can give us hope: a way of living that lessens self-interested agendas, inspires collective responsibility, and helps us meet not only the environmental and climate challenges of our time, but also the wider crises affecting our communities and society.

Those indigenous Native American leaders would recognise that our current crises are fuelled by a short-sighted inner fire – a drive to acquire, conquer and attain that meets a need for instantaneous gratification and feeds a demand for immediate comfort, fast consumption, and rapid economic returns. We have been acting like children rushing toward the flame for decades now.

And the flames are here –  not only in our outer world but in the inner worlds of each one of us: the inner world that has contributed to the place we find ourselves now as a race on this planet, with things looking precarious when we weigh them in the balance.

That Seventh Generation mindset can cool this collective impatience leading us to evaluate the effects of our local, regional, national and international habits and actions. It can support a life-sustaining legacy for the generations to come after us. It is not to late we are advised by experts around the world.

Throughout the field of Ayurveda, there is a recognition that “as in the macrocosm so in the microcosm”. We are as individuals also shaped by the collective forces around us and pressed in so many ways perhaps to act against our natural proclivities towards living in harmony and alignment with nature and our own inner nature. Our whole conditioning in so many ways conspires towards this tendency. An inner fire is alight within that leads so many of us to succumb to familial, social and other pressures of all sorts as we strive to conform to the conditionings placed upon us. It is the fire within that drives us forward and in so many ways can cause us to overstep our own boundaries and higher values so that we meet the adopted expectations of the world around us. And when the fire is out, when we cannot move forward but are locked in procrastination, fear, burn out, self-doubt, then we suffer as we take on the mantle of failure to live up to what society’s measures of worth and value.

In Ayurveda, one of the fundamental keys to sustained physical and mental-emotional wellbeing is a balanced agni – inner fire. That fire when it burns to strongly brings inflammation to the body  – in the digestive system, the skin, the joints and indeed any of the internal organ systems. In the mind and heart, it brings anger, intolerance, frustration, and impatience.

In evaluating our personal daily individual habits and aligning them with ourAyurveda type, we can keep our fire burning optimally.  And this does have a consequence for the society at large, as well as for our own personal health and wellbeing. As Mahatma Gandhi said “Be the change you want to see in the world”. A balanced agni is only possible through balanced living, it supports a balanced mind and a body with enhanced capacity for healthy longevity. Everything we think, do and say has a ripple effect far beyond our own immediate lives. We have explored this together. No less the balancing of our inner fire. In fact, we could say it is key to a harmonious life and balanced living – a living that does not need high consumerism, material acquisition and the next new experience, gadget or product to fulfil itself.

In the years that I have walked the path of Yoga and Ayurveda, it has struck me that the more in balance my body and mind kept through the practices, the less I need: contentment begins to replace consumption, simplicity feels abundant and nurturing, rather than lacking. Agni is at home and stable, prana is flowing harmoniously and so the body feels strong and in balance and the mind quiet, trusting and content.

It always comes back to this on the Yoga path, and in Ayurveda. We practice not just for ourselves. In living in alignment with our nature, we support the wider nature. In adhering to regular practice to keep agni, prana and mind in balance, we support harmonious relations, kind and positive thoughts, and so exceptional mental and emotional wellbeing. In walking the path, we transition from the way of the reckless younger sibling that the Kogi refer to, not only in our personal life but in our contribution to our families, our neighbourhoods and the planet. It always starts with us. As the boy and the starfish show.

When we become responsible stewards of our own body, mind and heart, we cannot help becoming responsible stewards of the Earth. The same awareness that teaches us to care for our digestion teaches us to care for our rivers. The same patience that cools anger within us naturally softens the way we meet one another and the living world. Inner ecology and outer ecology are not separate.

An untempered fire heat will eventually destroy its own home – whether that home is within our own bodies and minds, our in the world around us.

As we move through August, we reach the seasonal tipping point where the heat accumulated over the summer months threatens to spill over. There has never been a starker reminder than the raging fires we see tragically burning throughout the world.

In turning our inner focus toward the vital Ayurveda art of tempering our psychological and physical fires before they burn us out from the inside, as we pay heed to the pointers of this season, we are doing much not only for our own health and wellbeing, but for the wellbeing of our planet and all that lives and breathes.

And there is something more than this. When our inner fire is balanced, something remarkable happens. We begin once again to hear the quiet voice of the heart. It effortlessly and naturally calls us towards choices that nourish rather than deplete, towards contribution rather than consumption, towards a way of living that benefits both ourselves and the wider world – all in the most fulfilling and rewarding and so int most self-perpetuating way.

Perhaps this is where healing our society and our planet begin – wise men and women throughout the ages have told us so. It is not somewhere “out there”, but within each one of us. In balanced, aligned living. Then every act of inner balance becomes an act to support ecological balance.

If this way of seeing speaks to you, I would love you to join me for my Ecology of the Heart – Autumn Equinox Day Retreat on 21st September.

Together we will explore how to bring these timeless principles into everyday life according to your own unique nature. Through Yoga, Ayurveda, seasonal practices and self-enquiry, we will discover simple, practical ways to balance our inner fire, restore harmony to body and mind, and cultivate a way of living that naturally benefits both ourselves and the wider world.

There is no quick fix or magic wand. Instead, we follow a gentle, time-tested path—one that works with our biological, psychological and spiritual nature, and has supported human wellbeing for thousands of years.

I’d love to welcome you.

Contact me at sara@heart-of-ayurveda.com for details