Elemental Explorations Episode 3: Attuning to the Earth

Welcome to Elemental Explorations, a podcast and practice following water, fire, earth, and air through the seasonal shifts of the equinoxes and solstices hosted by Bethany Carder of hAfhAAA and My Resonant Frequencies and Gina Wisotzky of Incandescent Tarot and Alchemag.

Together, we move with the elements as living guides — through breath, sound, movement, image, myth, and deep listening. Gina brings the wisdom of tarot as an embodied and intuitive language, helping us listen to the symbols, archetypes, and relational patterns moving through the Fire Body. Bethany brings astronomical astrology and stellar somatics as a way of attuning to the living sky, the solar rhythm, and the body’s relationship with Earth, season, and cosmos.

Episode Overview

This episode moves from dialogue into embodied integration, poetry, and a listening meditation on the Earth body.

The integration practice begins with three minutes of alternate nostril breathing, followed by humming. A gentle laugh is gradually brought into the hum until it opens into ridiculous, full-bodied laughter. This sequence draws inspiration from teachings by Vickie Dodd and Laraaji, using breath, vibration, resonance and laughter to move energy through the body and prepare the field for deeper listening.

From there, we move into poetry from Ursula K. Le Guin’s Always Coming Home before entering a listening meditation on the Earth body.

The meditation moves from beneath the Earth toward the surface and into the home:

seismic activity → soil → tree → insects → birds → food preparation → voice → rest

We begin with a sonification of seismic data from the September 27, 2014 eruption of Mount Ontake, Japan, a steam-driven eruption in which hydrothermal fluids moved upward through rock toward the surface. The meditation begins at the meeting place of the elements: water moving through rock, transformed through heat and pressure, and emerging through the Earth body.

From there, we move through a contact-microphone recording within a compost heap and upward into a willow tree. Listening through the contact mic, we hear the fluid nature of the Earth body: the internal activity of the tree, water moving from roots toward leaves through xylem, sugars moving through phloem throughout the living tree, and wind moving through its body.

The sound field opens outward into terrestrial life through crickets and cicadas, and then upward into birds.

From there, we enter the home: spinach being sorted, food sizzling, water boiling for ramen, and the metallic rhythm of two forks separating noodles. Earth, water and fire meet through the ordinary act of preparing food while the outside world remains present through the open window.

The meditation closes in the kitchen, singing with the crickets while cooking: voice, insects, food preparation and the surrounding environment sharing the same sonic field.

The underlying noise floor is composed from field recordings gathered while meditating with the Earth body through the seasonal cycle between the June solstice and the September equinox. The approach to listening, recording and composition draws inspiration from the work of Hildegard Westerkamp and Annea Lockwood, including ideas from Westerkamp’s Music, Sound and Conflict, and from practices of attentive environmental listening in which field recording becomes a form of relationship rather than simply the collection of environmental sound.

Credits

Abram Morphew — piano; sonification of seismic data from Mount Ontake, September 27, 2014; production and mastering.

Gina Wisotzky — field recordings of crickets, cicadas and birds; sorting spinach and cooking sounds; recording in Durham, North Carolina.

Bethany Carder — field recordings of crickets and cicadas; cooking, boiling water and metal utensil recordings; seasonal Earth-body field recordings and noise floor; voice, poetry and meditation introduction; editing and mixing; recording in Portland, Oregon.

Recorded by Gina Wisotzky and Bethany Carder on August 25, 2026 at 6:00 AM PDT / 9:00 AM EDT, in Durham, North Carolina and Portland, Oregon.

Text

Ursula K. Le Guin — Always Coming HomeExcerpt from the Second and Third Houses of the Earth, pp. 84–85 in the edition used for this episode:

Come among the unsown grasses, bearing richly the oaks, heavy with acorns, the sweet roots and unploughed earth. Come among the deer on the hill, the fish in the river, the quail in the meadows. You can take them. You can eat them. Like you, they are food. They are with you, not for you. Who are their owners? This is the puma’s range. This hill is the vixen’s. This is the owl’s tree. This is the mouse’s run. This is the minnow’s pool. It is all one place. Come take your place. No fences here but sanctions. No war here but dying. There is dying here. Come hunt. It is yourself you hunt. Come gather yourself from the grass, the branch, the earth. Walk here, sleep well on the ground that is not yours but is yourself.

References + Influences

John Cage + Merce CunninghamChance Conversations: An Interview with Merce Cunningham and John Cage

LaraajiLARAAJI: Playing as the Field

Laraaji’s teachings also inform the use of laughter as an embodied energetic practice within the episode’s integration sequence.

Vickie Dodd / Sacred SoundworksTeachings on sound, vibration, resonance and the body inform the use of humming within the integration practice.

https://sacredsoundworks.com/

David Abram + Merlin SheldrakeOn the Anarchic Proliferation of Earthly PerspectivesA deep-ecology dialogue between cultural ecologist David Abram and mycologist Merlin Sheldrake, originally published by Emergence Magazine. Shared by Gina as part of the inquiry into what it is to be Earthling and how we understand ourselves within the wider field of earthly agencies.https://emergencemagazine.org/conversation/honoring-the-wild-proliferation-of-earthly-perspectives/

Hildegard WesterkampField-recording and soundscape-composition practice, including ideas from Music, Sound and Conflict, informing the use of environmental recording as attentive encounter and compositional material.

Annea LockwoodField-recording and environmental listening practices informing the approach to listening to, recording and composing with the Earth body.

Freesound Sources

Soil Listening - Woodlice and Ants - 20 minutes - 06.05by Mark_Taylor_Echophora_https://freesound.org/s/734779/License: Attribution 4.0

wind in willow 02 contact mic 150426_0644.flacby klankbeeldhttps://freesound.org/s/272322/License: Attribution 4.0

Research Links EE

Practice Note - breath - movement

Please honor your body throughout the breath and movement practices. Nothing should feel forced, strained, dizzying, painful, or uncomfortable. If anything does not feel right, return to your natural breath, pause the movement, and rest as needed.

For alternate nostril breathing, keep the breath gentle and do not hold or force the breath. If you are congested, feeling lightheaded or short of breath, pregnant, or managing cardiovascular or respiratory concerns, you may choose to breathe naturally and simply listen instead.

Move only within a comfortable range, and choose stillness whenever that better supports your body.