by Dana James
The Ethereal feels constrained by excess structure and logic. Taking a nine-to-five job is death to her soul, even if it takes her out of financial straits. She fears that it will corrupt her creative expression, which, for her, is worse than being monetarily poor. But when the creative chemistry of an Ethereal is allowed to flourish, particularly in the corporate world, it can be transformative for her and the people and institutions around her. Ethereals make life rich and colorful, and without them, life is black and white, rigid and contained.
Ethereals rarely hold resentments or grudges. They are forgiving and generous to others. This is one of the reasons for their low body weight and wraithlike quality—there’s less emotional baggage holding them down. When an Ethereal is at her crown, she is guided by her intuition and knows how to balance the demands of her outer world with the needs of her most spiritual self. She is soulful and successful and appears to float through life with an ethereal tranquility.
Ethereals on Earth include Fiona Apple, Kate Moss, Joan Didion, Edie Sedgwick, Carrie Bradshaw, Holly Golightly, and your artistic girlfriend who is traveling the world in a free-spirited way.
THE BELIEF SYSTEM: “MY INTUITION IS MY GIFT”
Ethereals believe their intuition is always right, but the interpretation of their intuition may not be. It may simply be a thought emerging from their subconscious, which is filtered by their experiences, particularly their childhood wounds. These wayward “intuitions” can make them feel scattered, spacey, overwhelmed, and unsure of what direction to take.
When the Ethereal’s intuition isn’t grounded with intellect, financial success can allude her. She can swing from one idea to the next depending on what she “hears” from her intuition, never sticking with one thing long enough to achieve stability. As she believes her intuition is always right, she can fall into the trap of not considering the financial feasibility of each project. My client Sadie, a designer of yoga wear, wanted to be a sound healer, develop meditation retreats, create jewelry, design scents, and bring women together for goddess tribes. While these ideas complemented her clothing line, and were all possible, Sadie struggled to keep her business afloat, let alone have the capacity or money to follow through on these other ideas. With so many goals she was stuck in inertia, not knowing what direction to take. Just as Wonder Woman overvalues her intellect, the Ethereal can overvalue her intuition. Both are guidance tools and they need each other to be effective. Sadie needed to consider the practical aspects of what her inner self was telling her to do.
On the other hand, if an Ethereal does not fully recognize her intuitive gift as her power source, she can unwittingly subjugate it to “fit in” to a world that values logic, looks, and finances over spiritual pursuits. My client Nina pursued a career as a corporate lawyer because that’s what was expected of a good Jewish girl from New York. But she is also a gifted poet and writer, and her career choice neutralized her Ethereal ways and exponentially increased her anxiety. She was left wondering, “Am I good at anything?”
An Ethereal can find herself obsessed with her body and food, exhibiting Femme Fatale traits, not realizing that she’s abandoned her intuitive essence. Not being able to exercise her true nature, she feels trapped and forlorn, and her self-esteem and self-worth become fragile and tender. Her physical body soon follows suit.
THE ETHEREAL ARCHETYPE: SIXTH, SEVENTH, AND EIGHTH CHAKRAS
The Ethereal is guided by the super-consciousness—the sixth, seventh, and eighth chakras, which represent intuition, insight, and connection to a purpose beyond the visible. The sixth chakra is located at the third eye, which is the point between the two eyebrows and is associated with the pituitary gland. The seventh chakra is located at the crown of your head and is associated with the pineal gland.
The eighth chakra is your aura. The purity of the super-consciousness is only accessed when the lower chakras are balanced. When the Ethereal falls into self-doubt and emotional instability, she needs to reconnect with the sixth, seventh, and eighth chakras and not float away into the celestial sphere. All archetypes can access these chakras, but the Ethereal is more attuned to them.
The super-consciousness is represented by the colors indigo, purple, and white. When the Ethereal needs to balance her intuition with her rational, more cognitive side, she can eat more purple and white plant foods. Most of us know that blueberries can improve our brain power, and that’s exactly how the Ethereal can use them. Purple cabbage, plums, purple grapes, leeks, onions, and potatoes (purple and white) can be used to enhance her cognition and rational thought. When she is lacking inspiration, she can use these same foods to strengthen her insight and wisdom. Wearing white enhances her radiance, while wearing purple helps to fine-tune her consciousness.
CHILDHOOD PATTERNS: FROM INTROSPECTIVE TO INTUITIVE TO “AM I CRAZY?”
Ethereal girls are inquisitive and embody innocent curiosity. They’re often introspective and try to process what they see and feel in the world. They may have been considered eccentric and learned to retreat into their inner thoughts. As painful as this might have been, it has shaped the Ethereal into the highly attuned woman she is today. Now she can sense things before they happen.
If the Ethereal’s parents nurtured her dreamy and imaginative ways, she will be bolder and more grounded than her Ethereal sisters who have learned to hide their intuitive gifts. In some extreme cases, Ethereal children can be put on a stimulant like Ritalin to force them to concentrate and focus. This is like shoving a square peg into a round hole; the stimulant will stunt her creative development in favor of concentration. How this ultimately affects the Ethereal as an adult is unknown, yet I suspect her repressed creativity will lead to the symptoms of withdrawal, sadness, skin breakouts, and digestive issues I see with Ethereal women who’ve disowned their intuitive ways.
If the Ethereal didn’t feel supported as a child, she may have layered on the Wonder Woman’s traits of perfection and found herself desperately seeking attention and approval by over-performing. When my client Susan, a dancer, was a child, she was constantly in motion—jumping, dancing, stretching, playing, and expressing herself through her body. Her parents didn’t know how to respond to this outpouring of creative energy and encouraged her to develop other skills and to stay still. Susan did as she was told, but because her primary mode of expression had been shut down, she shut down, too. She had learned through her parents’ messaging that moving around freely was “wrong” and that staying still and being perfect was “right.” This made her feel like she wasn’t normal and that her parents would not love her unless she abandoned who she was. She felt unaccepted and unworthy and tried to literally disappear by adopting disordered eating behaviors and exercising obsessively. It was only when we worked out together that she saw this pattern and was able to discard her need for perfection and lean into the rhythm of life. Her dance performances also improved because she trusted that her unique expression of the dance was what was captivating, not the perfection of the moves.
OUT OF BALANCE: “I FEEL ANXIOUS, SPACEY, AND SENSITIVE”
Like the other archetypes, an out-of-balance Ethereal will either operate in the amplification, always believing her intuition, whether it is right or not, or in the withdrawal, ignoring her instincts in favor of a more intellectual and rational outlook.
In the amplification, she’s on a quest to obey her intuition and avoid anything that may turn it off. She disconnects from reality, feels ungrounded, and becomes easily distracted. Depression, vertigo, inability to concentrate, skin breakouts, and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) are common symptoms. There are so many discombobulated thoughts running through her mind, she can’t make sense of it all, and she can struggle to make decisions. She may also shun the world, terrified that if she joins the mainstream her extrasensory abilities will be switched off. She can go to great lengths to avoid this integration, including secluding herself in ashrams, meditati
ng for hours on end, and forgetting to eat. One of my Ethereal clients used the quote from French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “We are spiritual beings having a human experience,” to justify her disconnection from the human world. But, I’m really a spirit! While she is a spirit, she is also a human being and therefore needs to remind herself to do human things like sleep, eat, foster meaningful relationships, and offer compassion to a fractured world. For the Ethereal to flourish, she needs to be centered, grounded, and present. Embodying the positive attributes of the other archetypes can help her achieve this.
In the withdrawal, the Ethereal has switched off her intuition in an attempt to be accepted by a world that has historically valued intellect and physical appearance over the mystical. She may struggle with anxiety, sadness, and digestive issues from compressed creative expression, as Nina the corporate lawyer and Susan the dancer did. The solution for her is to recognize that, like the bird in a gilded cage, her wings have been clipped. Once she understands that her instinctive way is to be expansive, dreamy, and imaginative, she’ll be like the ugly duckling realizing she’s a swan. She opens up, her creative fire is stoked, and she reclaims her dreamy, celestial ways. It’s magnificent.
When my client Laura realized she was an Ethereal operating in Wonder Woman mode, she had an epiphany. She no longer needed to own a big company to feel successful. Instead, she dropped the clients who were causing her to reach for the booze every night. She reconnected with her love of surfing and hiking and lived a life unburdened by unnecessary demands and rules. Her anxiety, exhaustion, and muffin top all disappeared.
EATING BEHAVIOR: “I’M SO SENSITIVE TO FOOD!”
The Ethereal is highly sensitive to the vibration of food, and eating the standard American diet is even more deleterious for her than to the other archetypes. Even though a junky diet will leave anyone feeling bloated, depressed, and fatigued, the Ethereal will feel these effects first. An Ethereal can also have multiple allergies and food sensitivities because of her more finely tuned frequency. Her physical body rejects chemicals and sends her into a hyperactive tailspin.
When my Ethereal friend was working for a woman’s beauty magazine (which is naturally out of alignment for an Ethereal because the focus on physical beauty is foreign to her), she’d eat junky food to escape the disappointment of the career she had chosen. It was only when she was courageous enough to leave her job for more creative endeavors that her food choices changed and she understood that she had turned to these unhealthy foods to feel numb.
If you are an Ethereal and are absorbed in what you’re creating, you may forget to eat. This can trigger blood-sugar imbalances and anxiety. It’s vital that you eat clean, healthy food every few hours to keep yourself connected to the physical plane.
THE CHALLENGE FOR THE ETHEREAL: TO INTEGRATE THE INTUITIVE WITH THE INTELLECTUAL
My friend Shiva Rose is an Ethereal at her crown. She describes the metamorphosis that occurred when she was going through a divorce and raising two children. She couldn’t just drift away into the mystical world. She had responsibilities. She needed to create a home, make money, and be a mother. She learned to get back to the earth. She purchased a place in Los Angeles where she could raise chickens, plant a vegetable and herb garden, and bask in the Californian sunshine. She also created a high-end organic skin-care line with roses sourced from Italy. She describes this as balance and choice. She can be ethereal and float out into the astral world with intense breath work or she can be grounded by gardening and cooking with spices and herbs. Grounding has expanded her life, not compressed it.
Similarly, when Sadie harnessed her inner Wonder Woman by integrating intellect with her intuition, she was able to apply financial logic to her creative ideas and rapidly increase the profitability of her yoga apparel business. Today she has a flourishing business that has expanded to include all of the things she wanted to develop.
The first mini-challenge for the Ethereal is to plan a day of activities and to follow through on all of them. Although you may feel some resistance toward this since you prefer to follow your whims, this exercise will help you become more structured and show you that you won’t die from boredom if you stick to a plan. You can choose any activities you want, but you must write them down, then follow the schedule precisely. Doing this one day a week for four weeks will help activate your inner Wonder Woman.
To ascend to your crown, you must believe that applying logic to your creative ideas won’t distort them. Rather, it helps discern which are valid and which are not. When you simultaneously blend your intuition with your intellect, there’s nothing you can’t bring to fruition. To help you get there, you can activate the positive attributes of the other archetypes:
Layer in the earthiness of the Nurturer by planting herbs and flowers and sourcing your food from a local farmers’ market.
Embody the Wonder Woman’s resilience and become stronger and more robust in your thinking.
Embrace the body awareness of the balanced Femme Fatale so you don’t forget that you are also a physical being.
When you layer in these attributes, you become a source of feminine inspiration. You become the mystical muse for your archetype sisters.
THE ETHEREAL FOOD PRESCRIPTION
The Ethereal is naturally lean, with a willowy and light physique supported by long, slender muscles. Your physiology is naturally balanced and can process food more efficiently thanks to well-regulated insulin levels and thyroid function. If you do gain weight, it is usually the result of relying on starchy and sugary foods in an effort to numb your sensitivity to the energies and emotions of others.
Even so, I have never met an Ethereal with the body shape of a Nurturer. My friend Madeline is able to connect with the angels, but this doesn’t make her an Ethereal. She’s a gifted healer who imparts unconditional love and has a sturdier body. She is a Nurturer who has ascended closer to her crown and is therefore able to tap into her innate spiritual energy. If you identify psychologically as an Ethereal but your body looks more like that of a Nurturer or Wonder Woman, you are probably not an Ethereal and should not follow her meal plan, which is the least restrictive and therefore less suitable if you are trying to lose weight. Instead, follow the meal plans for the archetype who best matches your body shape.
It’s not entirely clear why Ethereals are blessed with a body that burns fat easily, but my guess is that it’s because they are more in tune with their energetic body, which helps balance the physical body. Our energetic body is invisible and connected to the spiritual world, so other archetypes are prone to neglect it because they can’t see it. Ethereals, however, are more aware of their energy and, when they sense an imbalance, can work to correct it through practices like meditation, yoga, and breath work. All of the archetypes can benefit from this type of spiritual work, and in Part III, I will discuss why integrating them into your life will ultimately put you on a path to achieving weight loss and a better sense of overall health and well-being.
IMBALANCES: ESTROGEN, AND THE GUT MICROBIOME
Due to your low body weight, you can have hormonal issues caused by low levels of estrogen. Too little estrogen can lead to a variety of symptoms such as amenorrhea, depression, dry skin, insomnia, low libido, and infertility. Increasing your carbohydrate intake can help boost the amount of free estrogen in your body.
Ethereals also regularly suffer from constipation and bloating, often caused by an out-of-balance gut microbiome that is riddled with pathogenic bacteria and yeast. These microbes are usually beneficial and, when in balance, the gut microbiome helps with a variety of important bodily functions, including stabilizing mood, controlling hunger, stimulating fat burning, supporting the thyroid, and regulating sex hormone levels. But, thanks in no small part to the rapid industrialization of our food system, which introduced antibiotics into the standard American diet, many of these good bacteria have been killed off or mutated i
nto pathogenic yeast, bacteria, or parasites that wreak havoc on your body, especially your digestion. Excess refined carbohydrates can disrupt the delicate balance of good bacteria to bad bacteria. When you feel spacey or depressed, you can make poor dietary choices, which further upset the gut microbiome.
While Ethereals are typically lean, a disrupted gut microbiome has been found to play a role in weight gain. The link between the gut microbiome and weight gain became unassailable in 2004, when researchers took the gut microbiota from regular mice and inserted it into germ-free mice. The germ-free mice had a 60 percent increase in body fat and insulin resistance within just two weeks!1 The researchers concluded that the gut bacteria played an instrumental role in how we store body fat. The researchers then took the microbiota from both the lean mice and obese mice and inoculated the germ-free mice. The result: the microbiota from the obese mice caused greater weight gain despite the mice eating less food and exercising more!2
If you are an Ethereal who is prone to constipation, bloating, flatulence, or other digestive issues, chances are, your gut microbiome is to blame. Pathogenic yeast is most often the cause, and I recommend taking specific supplements to kill off the mutated forms of yeast. Bad bacteria and parasites may also be contributing to your symptoms, and if your symptoms don’t resolve after the anti-yeast protocol discussed in the supplement section, I suggest you work with a functional medicine practitioner or naturopath who can test your gut microbial composition.