181. The Sacred Elements: Nature, Water & Ancient Wisdom with Suri Sawyer

What if the greatest teacher for living well has been nature all along?

"If you really want to learn to live well, you must look at nature. It shows us everything." – Suri Sawyer 

In this episode of Together We Seek, I sit down with Suri Sawyer, a former Montessori teacher, sacred elements guide, death doula, yoga teacher, and retreat leader in Costa Rica. Through her work with nature, grief, plant medicine, and the sacred elements, Suri helps people remember their interconnectedness with the Earth, each other, and themselves. 

Together we explore:
 ✨ The sacred elements and how they exist within each of us
 ✨ Why reconnecting with nature can deepen intuition and healing
 ✨ The wisdom of water and our relationship with the Earth
 ✨ Suri's journey from Montessori educator to sacred guide
 ✨ How grief, death, and transition can become powerful teachers
 ✨ Simple ways to reconnect with nature every day

Find Suri

Website: https://www.surisawyer.com/ 

IG: https://www.instagram.com/suri.sawyer/ 

FB: https://www.facebook.com/melinda.a.sawyer 

YT: https://www.youtube.com/@Suri.Sawyer22 

@Suri.Sawyer22

Suri Bio:

Whether you're feeling called to spend more time outdoors, deepen your spiritual practice, or simply remember your connection to the natural world, this conversation offers practical wisdom and heartfelt inspiration.

Suri Sawyer is a Reiki healer, death doula, and holistic counselor based in Costa Rica, offering a multidimensional approach to healing that bridges mind, body, and spirit. Embracing the role of *Anam Cara* — soul friend, mirror, and guide — she creates safe space for clients to move through grief, navigate transitions, and reconnect with their inner wisdom.

At the heart of her work is a deep reverence for the natural world. Living immersed in Costa Rica's rainforest and coastline has deepened a lifelong devotion to the plant and animal kingdoms and the sacred elements of earth, water, fire, and air — nature not as backdrop, but as teacher and co-facilitator in the healing process.

Suri moves fluidly across energy healing, somatic practice, ancestral ritual, and intuitive guidance, tailoring her approach to each client. With a background in child development and many years spent teaching preschool, she brings a childlike innocence and playfulness to all her work — a quality that softens even the deepest healing into something light, curious, and full of wonder.

Her offerings include 1:1 sessions, grief support, holistic counseling, psychedelic integration, and energy healing, alongside community gatherings she hosts in close relationship with the land. She listens intuitively and walks alongside clients with steadiness, helping them transform grief and remember their belonging to both the earth and themselves.

#NatureAsHealing #SacredElements #HealingThroughPlay #ReikiHealing #SpiritualAwakening

JJ DiGeronimo is an award-winning author, speaker, and podcast host dedicated to helping women trust their inner wisdom, illuminate their gifts, and align with meaningful work. As the host of the Together We Seek Podcast, JJ creates sacred spaces to explore light, energy practices, and ancient wisdom with healers, mystics, and spiritual teachers. Through authentic conversations, she encourages listeners to embrace their unique gifts, deepen their self-trust, and remember the wisdom they already carry.

JJ is the author of four books, including her latest release, Illuminate Your Path: 6 Phases of Spiritual Awakening. Find Your Phase at: https://quiz.jjdigeronimo.com/

Books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/JJ-DiGeronimo/author/B01INZ5GA2 

Website:  https://jjdigeronimo.com         
Together We Seek Community: https://www.togetherweseek.online/                                                               

Transcript

Hello. Hello. JJ DiGeronimo here. Thank you for spending your time with us. I wanna make sure that you are grounded and paying attention to where you are right now because many of you listen to this while you're walking, hiking. Some of you are doing chores around the house. You could even be driving. And I feel like for so much of what we're gonna talk about today, sacred elements, it's what's happening around you and being aware and paying attention. So I have Suri Sawyer from Costa Rica here with me today. Hello, Suri. Good day. Hello. I'm so honored that you're joining me here. You and I are friends with a wonderful illuminated soul, Donna Bond. So thank you, Donna, for connecting us. So tell us thank you, Donna. So tell us a little bit about what sacred elements are. Wonderful. The elements are just as we know them, earth, air, fire, water, ether, or plasma, the plasma field, um, as well as precious metals is and the elements are what make up everything in different combinations. So your body, my body are made up of elements. It is consists of the earth material, the water material, it's full of air, space, it's also full of ether and plasma. Um

, and we also have a balance of precious metals inside of our bodies that make us operate and run electricity through us. So everything in existence here on this earth plane is comprised of the sacred elements. My perception is that over time, we have forgotten that we are the elements and the elements are us. I am water. You are water. I am air. You are air. I am fire. You are fire. I am earth. You are earth. And this disconnection from the awareness that we are made of the elements, I think, can limit our capacity to really feel alive and interconnected with all things…

That is beautiful. That is beautiful. And do you believe…that there's an energy that wants us to forget that? That's a really interesting question. Yes. I perceive that there are certain people or forces or energies…that if we really understood the interconnectedness of all things, we would be so powerful and not controllable. We also would potentially be a little bit more angry about what's happening to the elements on the planet. One of the things that I feel deeply in my being is what's happening to the water all over the planet. It's absurd to me that so many people on Earth do not have access to clean living water. How did this occur? Um, and I feel because we don't realize that we are the water, we seem to not understand how to steward or care for it, and I think that's by design so that people can get away with different things here and cause the human, uh, race to be a bit more controllable…

I agree with you. I agree with you. The water is so upsetting to me, and I also do think that there's this energy that is slightly more powerful than we are right now that keeps us at a holding pattern. Mhmm. Absolutely. I had a an experience, uh, in a vision once where I was communicating with the land and the people on the land, and I was observing the people on this…spot of land. It was Los Angeles, California. And I realized, woah. The land here feels like it's either deeply asleep or nearly dead. And the population of the people that are on this land are mirroring the amount of a sleepiness that the land is in. And it's hard to tell chicken or egg. Did the land fall asleep because the stewards of the land fell asleep? Or did the land fall asleep and then the stewards fell asleep? I think it's the stewards fell asleep, and then the land was like, I'm not being cared for, and went into kind of a depressive sleeping state. And so I was communicating with the land in Los Angeles and inviting her to wake up again and sing her song and remember who she is, and as a side effect, the population upon the land would have to wake up in response to her awakeness…

I just love how attuned you are to everything that's happening around us. I feel like as humans…we are disconnected from the elements in ourselves and around us, and I love the work that you're doing to bring those back together, to lock those in at a different level, to create this appreciation and interconnectiveness between…and among the humans and nature. So thank you. Thank you for the work you're doing. Thanks for witnessing it. I see also that the…forgetting of our interconnectedness causes us to lose a certain, uh, innate morality toward each other as well as toward the Earth. When we really understand the interconnectedness of all things, it's almost impossible to harm another with you. I know we're always gonna kind of trigger each other here and there, but it's almost impossible to harm another if you really deeply understand that they are you and you are them, and that everything you do to another, you do to yourself. Similarly, you would never poison a lake or a river if you really understood that you were poisoning yourself. You would never poison the air if you really understood that it was poisoning you and your children and your children's children. You just couldn't if you really did understand the interconnectedness of everything. Likewise, you would be I perceive most people would be much kinder to themselves if they realized the interconnectedness…

because what we do to ourselves, we really do to others. And I wonder if you've ever been in a conversation with someone that's speaking in a way that's very critical or harmful and thought to yourself, oh my god. Is that how you speak to yourself? Like, I'm sorry. You know…Yes. Yes. It is amazing when you…you have to work towards it. I feel like you have to work to change your frequency. And once you really work to change your frequency, you start to notice…everything that's happening around because you're in the present moment. You're more aware of what you're saying, what you're listening to, what you're reading, and what you're saying to yourself. And my daughter and I just got ice cream last week, and we were sitting there. And, I mean, the table behind us, it was just like one bad story after another. And I was like, wow. Did they even realize, like, what they're attracting? Mhmm…

I wonder that too. I love Babylon, the concept of Babylon. I like to break it down as babble on. Yes. Because the curse is to overspeak complaints and, um, that what you do not want or gossip. Oh my gosh. Like, what a toxic frequency that is. And if people only realize that what's coming out of their mouth is creating all the time…

Creating all the time, and we can witness that in water. I think many of the listeners have read about water or have heard about water that water holds the frequency in which, uh, is shared with that. And I have this property I'm working on by the water, and I just had a vision today that every time I have an event with people, I'm going to walk to the water and share love and light with the water. Every event I have because I feel like that is such a reciprocal procedure or such a reciprocal activity. When we're sharing love and light with the water, the water is sharing love and light with us. Absolutely. And water is omnipresent. If you think about it, it's in everything. Yes. Nothing here exists unless it has water in it, and all water molecules communicate with each other. And so if I'm praying in the river here by my house and I put my hands in in the water and I sing and I pray to her, that transmits everywhere across the globe and around the globe. That, like, gives my whole body a little bit of a this little shock of energy, which I love to hear. Now what I love to share here is the journey that many people are on, and I love your journey of being a Montessori teacher and working with children and then moving into this beautiful space where you're working with people to

realign and activate energy and healing…through ancestral rituals and others. So can you talk a little bit about that journey, that transition from working with children, maybe what you brought with you, and how it was to move through that journey? Thank you for asking. My first job ever was working at an after school day care program. So from the beginning, I was very involved with children and love love it, man. It's so fun to just go spend your day with a bunch of kids, and it's it's serious. Right? You're in charge. It is important. But it's play and it's sung and it's, um, communication. A big part of teaching is communication. In Montessori, uh, I started teaching in Montessori schools when I was twenty, and I loved this idea that everything is really based on the environment that you're in, and how you set up the environment is the greatest of how people will behave. So as a teacher, my job was to set up an environment where the children could thrive and then observe their behavior based on that. And…

with that in mind, I started to look outside at other environments that us as adults were in. For example, the grocery store. The grocery store is not a healthy environment actually for shopping because there's loud music on. In many grocery stores, they're playing advertisements for, uh, pharmaceuticals and saying, do you feel like this? Do you feel like this? Do you feel like this? And it make it actually starts to decrease a human's capacity for willpower over what they choose to buy. And same with, like, Target or the mall. It's really interesting that environment is literally set up to snatch you to a degree. So as I started to observe this, I started to consider what environments…do us as adults need to be in so that we're healthier. And the answer is nature…

I was teaching for ten years and…I loved it very much. And during this time, I also began to teach yoga. I started to study yoga, and I also started to study plant medicine. So I start studied, uh, with psilocybin and a medicine called Jurema, and eventually, um, it took me into the field of Ayahuasca…As I started working with these medicines, I was sitting in a ceremony one time and the medicine showed me my voice and said, can we use this? And I said, sure. And then I It showed me other characteristics of mine and said, can I use this? And I said, sure. And then it showed me sitting at circle time in my preschool classroom, and I it was like, look at every kid in the face. And it was kids that had been in my classroom over the time I taught. And I would look at a kid in their face, and my heart went, like, exploding. And I looked at the next kid, and I was like, my heart exploded. And this continued. There was one kid in the circle who every day, JJ, gave me a run for my money. Like, this kid was so challenging. But I looked at his face and my heart exploded…

so much more. And it was this, like, this kid was so hard, but, like, the love that you had for this kid to see him thrive and not fail, like…was so expansive. Can we use that? And I was like, sure. And then I realized, oh my god, what did I just commit to? And then I said, I'm very happy to be of service to nature and…to the plants and to the plant kingdom and to the element kingdom, and I also need to be taken care of. So…in exchange for this, I would always like to have a safe place to live, food, shelter, water, and enough money to be flexible in my existence. I wanna feel safe. And then I heard, look down at your hands. And I looked down in my palms and it was full of nuts, dates, and figs. Obviously, I'm hallucinating. Right? And…I heard the medicine say, you'll always have the best and richest of everything, but nothing more than you can hold. And basically, from that ceremony on, my life radically changed, and COVID started happening. Um

, the rules of the schools started seriously compressing, and I had to leave. There was something in my being, I can't do this anymore. So I quit actually halfway through the year…and moved out of California. And for a couple years, I was kind of moving nomadically around the United States, serving medicine and sitting in ceremonies and doing energy healing with people. And then it eventually brought me to Costa Rica where, honestly, I feel like healing work and medicine work, it is no different than sitting in a circle time with a bunch of children and singing them songs and navigating them through conflict or, uh, discomfort or even inviting them into, hey, what if the fastest way to heal was just to join me in radical joy and let the pain fall off? And so that's how that occurred…

Uh, so do you think your time as a teacher…prepared you for the work you're doing now? One hundred percent. I feel like that was the foundation of everything. It taught me how to communicate. Um, it taught me how to take complex ideas and break them down into something that is deliverable from every level. One of the things I hear often from people is, wow, you're really good at breaking down a complex idea into something that's so simple to understand. And that came from my time with preschool. My, um, capacity for, I would say, non judgment, Just like, oh, you're just a human being a human? Because I have a heart that looks at everyone as if they're a kid. And I'm like, oh, yeah. Sometimes we make mistakes. What are you gonna do about it now? And that innocence, that innocence, that wonder, being around children so much got that so deeply in my cells that it will not be removed and now it goes with me everywhere. In my one on one client work, one of my favorite parts about that is that we're talking about serious things, I work with grief and death and dying, but ninety percent of the time, we're laughing hysterically…

And, of course, we'll cry and things like that, but we bring it into, like, oh my god. And by the end of the call, like, the oh, I okay. I forgot. In my grief, I forgot I could feel good. Thank you for reminding me. We'll talk in a couple weeks…

Yes. Your death doula work is so powerful. It's helping people…do that are going through it, but also, I'm sure, the people around them too. Yeah. Most of what I do now as grief and death doula work is I work with the family members of those who are dying. Uh, so a lot of people my age now are having parents that are, uh, terminal, And they also have children, and so it starts to affect the entire constellation. And most of us don't have any idea how to be with death. No one has taught us to die well. No one has taught us to die wise. So I enjoy to work with people my age to support them, to support their dying loved one, as well as how to speak to their children. And, um, coming in as a support or a scaffolding that can be neutral while this major initiation and transition happens for an entire constellation…

I mean, heavy stuff. Heavy stuff. But I love the fact that, like, nature and the sacred elements are your root in regardless of your teaching students or if you're helping a family move through transition or if you're in a yoga class, you know, or you're doing Reiki. I feel like all of that, those sacred elements seem to be so powerful and the root of a lot of your energy. Yes. I truly believe that if you really want to learn to live well, you must look at nature. It shows us everything. If we ever wanna create a system like a government, we must look at the ant colonies. Right? We must look at the bee colonies. They are actually showing us how it functions. Um, and so anything you need to know about life can be found in nature, also about death. Right? It's everywhere in nature. I love the symbology of, like, a sunflower, for example. It's a little seed, and then it starts to grow, it becomes beautiful and it blooms into this amazing thing and it follows the sun and it's the height of its existence, then it starts to wilt forward, it dies. But as it dies, from its face, drop a hundred more sunflower seeds…

That's so beautiful. I believe, like, the next generation of students, of humans are much more attuned with that. I mean, it seems like isn't it, um, is it biogeneration? Is that what they call it? Where you're following what's the word that's they're used that you're following nature to, like, build products and solutions? I don't know the word, but we people are becoming way more conscious about that and building things that are healthy for the next seven generations. I think that that is coming back. Like, how is this decision that I make today going to affect the the next seven generations? Well, anyone listening, if you know the word, let us know. But I know that they're bioidentical, biodynamic. I can't remember what the word is, but there's products that are developed. My friend Katie's working on this too where you use nature as a guide to tell you how to create products, and I love the idea of creating, a new government structure in the way of ant colonies. if it works for nature, it will most likely work for us humans. You know? And I think for us, we have been taught to disconnect. We look out windows all the time, but we're not really in nature. So, I guess, do you have any, like, lasting advice or thoughts or ideas of for people that are kind of wanting to get connect with nature, but just feel disconnected? Absolutely…

Observe it. Use your senses. You have sight. You have hearing. You have taste. You have feeling. Use your senses to immerse yourself in it. As often and as possible as often as it is possible for you, put yourself in a natural body of water. There are fewer things more cleansing and more calibrating than a natural body of water. Uh, let yourself get dirty. Something that I notice when I go back to the states is it seems like people are afraid to be dirty, and everyone's sterilizing their homes and sterilizing themselves. It's okay. Mother nature isn't dirty. That's the that's the thing about it. If you have soil on you, you're not dirty. You're covered in the mother. Like, come on, kids. Let's garden. You know? Um, and the other thing that I would say is…if at all possible where you live, allow yourself to go through the process of growing something from seed to consumption…It will teach you so much. It will teach you about how there's so much potential in this tiny little thing and it knows exactly what it's gonna become. And you put some of your saliva on it, if you hold it in your mouth for thirty, forty seconds, then the seed actually picks up your, uh

, human biome. And however it grows, let's say you're deficient in vitamin b, that plant is going to produce more vitamin b for you. And so get in touch with the technology of a seed, plant it, and get it to the place where then you can eat that cucumber or eat that pumpkin. That alone, I think, is gonna start to click people back into the mother…I love this as part of a retreat is, like, sucking on the seeds, planting them, and then eating them. I think that is magical. This whole conversation is magical. The work that you're doing is spectacular. Where can people find you? What are you working on next? You can find me at Suri Sawyer dot com, and you can also find me at surrey sawyer on Instagram. I would like I do private one on ones with people to work on coming back to the heart and to live from a place of the deep divine gnosis of the interconnectedness of all things. Also, if you're experiencing grief, loss, or major transition, like liminal space kind of things in life, Those are some of my favorite places to meet people. I enjoy to practice midwivery in the human experience. And if you guys are interested, I just started, um

, managing and running a retreat center here in Costa Rica in the mountains called Zen Village. And the greenhouse is full. We've been working on it since February. It's now fully functional. We eat out of it every day. We're right next to a beautiful river. And it's just a really nice place to come and be, to heal, to be well, to rest, to restore, and to come into the gnosis of your interconnectedness…

Oh, Suri. I wanna come visit. I hope you have a retreat or something that we, as listeners, can come join you. Yes. I'll keep you posted. Thank you so much for your time today, JJ. Thank you, and thank you everybody who's listening. Please connect with Suri. All her links are below. And do yourself the gift of going out into nature today, grounding yourself with your toes, checking out a leaf, paying attention to the birds, and get yourself some seeds where you can start to grow things. Not only are they growing in nature, but they're growing with you. Th