One of my most blissful early aquatic bodywork experiences was being held upside down and under water in the 'embryo' position where it seemed I accessed both my conception and my dying. It was as if everything came together in me and expanded beyond me at the same time: a paradox that made sense. The person who facilitated this was my friend Inika Sati. There was always a certain recognition between us, then a too-long gap, and recently we connected again for another session.
This series of five posts was inspired by that recent session, and the two with other aquatic bodyworkers that followed it, during a week in mid-March when a similar shift in my consciousness occurred. I had returned, after many years, to the place where my love affair with the element Water began - Harbin Hot Springs in northern California. I was hoping, with some trepidation, for the kind of recollection that did in fact occur. I was in need of a depth of healing or soul-tending that this form of bodywork in water has been able to effect in me.
In just a few days, with the certainty of an intuition I have come to recognize and act upon, I shifted from a state of chronic depression to one that I am comfortable describing as 'ecstatic'. For me, that state is synonymous with 'joy'. It's as if whatever keeps me from direct contact with a vibrancy I'll call life force falls away. There is also a sense of invincibility to this feeling, since any fear of being hurt by anything outside of myself dissolves, along with the separation of 'inside' from 'outside'. Others can see and feel this in me too.
On his website The Souls Journey, Lawrence Edwards writes: Kundalini awakening is the esoteric goal of all yogas and has been sought by sages for thousands of years. It leads one into the profound depths of meditation, states of rapture and union with the Divine, dissolution of self and the direct experience of the infinite spaciousness of Being. This series is my story of an aquatic kundalini re-awakening. It's an important part of my own soul's journey.
I'm attempting again to describe how this shift occurred for me and what significance I find in that personally - it's a state I'd like to learn to sustain or return to more often, intentionally. I also hope it will be useful to others interested in exploring aquatic bodywork as a means of altering consciousness and healing the crises that occur in every life. I began to articulate this exploration in 2002 when I wrote an article, 'Dancing in Healing Waters' for Shamans Drum Magazine (issue 62, 2002, pp. 17-27):
In a rational and secular world, few are truly willing to examine every aspect of their body-mind, including potentially painful psychological material, and surrender to spirit. Instead of psychotropic drugs, we use that most mystical of substances water to trigger an altered state of consciousness in which a willing receiver will be flooded with images, perceptions, feelings and sensations of such impact and consequence that a profound alteration in body-mind organization is possible.
My personal experience is that the physical body is intimately linked with and affected by state of consciousness; and that both exist within a dynamic energy field that immersion in body-temperature water can be extraordinarily effective in revealing and transforming. I believe that attending to the troubles of the body in the purely physical dimension is not as likely to be of lasting value, or as effective in healing, as setting the body in a context where it's energy field can be attended to also. Water offers such a setting.
There is also a poetic or soulful dimension to this process of healing. In Care of the Soul (1994)'The Body's Poetics of Illness', Thomas Moore says (p. 164) that the word disease means 'not having your elbows in a relaxed position' or having 'no elbow room'. Ease, he suggests is a form of pleasure, dis-ease a loss of pleasure. 'A specialist in disease,' says Moore, 'should begin his questions for diagnosis with issues of pleasure.... Are you fighting pleasure somewhere or in some part of your body that is seeking pleasure?'
Water enables elbow room in that the body is free to move in a fully supported yet three-dimensional fashion. Immersion in warm water is often a pleasant sensory experience and can sometimes diminish our perception of pain - those soaking in Harbin's natural mineral waters clearly appreciate this. The experiences associated with the sessions I received this past March at Harbin were a dance between pleasure and pain that led me on a journey through a psychosomatic history for which I sought (and received) some resolution.
For interest, here are some relevant terms from the Siddha Yoga Glossary.
CONSCIOUSNESS:The intelligent, supremely independent, divine Energy, which creates, pervades, and supports the entire universe.
EGO:In yoga, the limited sense of 'I' that is identified with the body, mind, and senses; sometimes described as 'the veil of suffering.'
SELF:Divine Consciousness residing in the individual, described as the witness of the mind or the pure I-awareness.
SELF-REALIZATION:The state of enlightenment in which the individual merges with pure Consciousness.
ENLIGHTENMENT:The final attainment on the spiritual path, when the limited sense of 'I' merges into supreme Consciousness.
For the next four posts in this series see:A path to aquatic ecstasy
Diving deeper: shamanic, yogic, scientific and poetic paths
Pristine waters; murky depths
How to investigate aquatic altered states of consciousness
Also see:
Harbin Hot Springs
Quotes: A yogic river
For more of Alan Rayner's beautiful artwork and to contact him go here. The use of Alan's artwork here does not imply that he agrees with the views presented.
