Aquapoetics

Aquatic bodywork: patterns of healing

I'm often thinking about the interface between science and art and whether they can meet without one drowning out the other.  Aquatic bodywork, with its inherent beauty of form and experience, might be one such meeting place.

Recently, I came across an article in the Institute of Sport and Remedial Massage (UK), Newsletter, March 2011(16). Its title was 'Underwater Massage Ballet' and its subtitle 'Exploring the muscle reprogramming potential of Watsu'.

Aside from the scientific tone of the subtitle, much of the article was an inspiring and experiential account of a session the author received from aquatic bodywork practitioner Stef Cerf.

The following paragraph leapt out at me. Ian Tennant wrote:

I was curious to find out more from Stef about the elegant movements used during the session. ‘I work with archetypal shapes such as the figure of eight, vortex, circle, and sinusoidal wave when steering clients through the water,’ explained Stef. ‘There is a force behind shapes and these somehow resonate with us.’ This left me wondering whether his treatment could help align a body with the universal forms, shapes, and patterns which are so commonly observed in nature.

As far as I know, the person who first brought these wonderful insights about shape to aquatic bodywork was Alexander Georgeakopoulos, a dancer who developed the aquatic modality called Healing Dance.

Alexander has the visual and sensory poetry you'd expect of a dancer. He wrote:

Healing Dance recognizes the power of the body mudra and expands it to include archetypal patterns not decreed by religion, but with an even deeper resonance rooted in the psyche. These postures include arching, the fetal position, self-embracing, reaching with one arm, opening both arms to sky or to the sides, and holding the hands in prayer position or over the heart. The aquatic receiver, even though not intentionally assuming these positions as in mudra practice, may discover a personal meaning once placed in them. Just as we offer movement, we offer body mudras with an understanding of their potential to see if they have relevance for the receiver. We hold a space for meanings to emerge. [Source]

Movement practitioner, Emilie Conrad writes of the ways in which: 'ALL fluids of the body - whether circulating blood, the tides of cerebrospinal fluid, the pump of the lymph system, the net of membranes or the swirl of viscera and brain - function as fundamentally ONE undulating stream of intelligence. [Source]

In the last year especially, her Continuum newsletters have referenced innovative studies of water and how these inform our understanding of our own watery bodies. The new field of Holistic Science offers more in exploring these ideas than conventional science alone:

For anyone who loves floating: inspiration for water fun

Most children enjoy water play: it's a sensory extravaganza and a sensational learning experience. One of the things I love about aquatic bodywork is that it can bring back these memories of joy and bliss. The movements are liberating: floating, submerging, skimming, spinning, rolling, bobbing, and - if you're using Floatli® - frog jog.

Recently, aquatic exercise expert Pamela Morse sent me some Floatli® - a set of floatation devices she designed - to try out. I hadn't had any instruction before using them, though I did take a peek at the short video on her website. What a wonderful time I had trying to work out what to do and laughing at my own aquatic antics!

Boundaries of possibility: creating safety with Integrative Aquatic Therapy

 

 

Beyond bodywork skills, training in somatic psychotherapy (combining body-based and verbal interventions), together with the ability to recognize and work appropriately with possible early developmental issues in a client, can greatly enhance the healing potential of an aquatic session.

When, as adults, we experience disproportionate symptoms of stress,  it may be that our primal brainstem memory is being triggered.   It has been suggested that adult anxiety, panic attacks, fear, depression and other symptoms, relate to womb, birth or other very early experiences.

Studies in the field of prenatal and perinatal psychotherapy indicate that how we respond to stress as adults is laid down before birth, long before we had words to express our pain.  Fetuses and babies have consciousness and memories, and react specifically to their experiences.

Those experiences may not have been preventable or avoidable (parental financial stress, medical emergency at birth, unexpected pregnancy, and many more possible issues) but they can still have effects ranging from mild to major upon a new conception, developing fetus, or newborn child.

The ability to work skillfully and nonjudgmentally with these very early expressions of unmet basic needs in adults in the course of giving aquatic bodywork sessions is something that is generally overlooked.  The consequences of not having any understanding of this might actually be harmful in some cases.

Below is an outline of a session I recently received from David Sawyer the developer of Integrative Aquatic Therapy.  This session established a safe space, a self-empowering starting point, for a week of exploring prenatal themes in aquatic bodywork.

Aquatic Prenatal Journey with David Sawyer at Amnion Aquatics, WA

This July I had the opportunity to celebrate my birthday by participating in a very special aquatic class with David Sawyer LPC and assisted by Mary Seamster.  I've written about his work in two previous posts (links below) and will soon write more as I integrate and attempt to articulate my recent experience in more detail. 

In the meantime, here is an extended copy of the feedback submission I made to WABA (Worldwide Aquatic Bodywork Association) describing Prenatal Journey for other aquatic bodyworkers.  The class I took was hosted at Mary Seamster's beautiful center for Amnion Aquatics in La Center, Washington.

I took this course and the subsequent one (Birth Journey) about a decade ago at Mary's previous venue in the same state, just 2 years into my training in many of the available aquatic modalities at Harbin Hot Springs where Watsu® was born.

Healing boundary issues with prenatal aquatic therapy

 

Healing this pattern [birth-related trauma], and feeling in the body what a healthy boundary in the womb is like, shifts the adult relationship patterns on a very deep level. It is a domino effect that runs forward in time.... Everyone’s story is unique. ... A common thread, however, is bringing wholeness and empowerment to self and relationship. David Sawyer IAT

In some spiritual practices, the dissolving of boundaries between self and other is greatly sought after (see Conscious Fluidity on Aquapoetics).   However, there is a difference between healthy individuation and vulnerability to the power and control of others. On an everyday level being able to establish and maintain personal boundaries is an important self-assertive and protective skill. 

The issues of boundaries and transference, well-known in psychotherapy and somatic psychotherapy seem to have an even more profound and, for the unprepared, potentially difficult quality when bodywork is done in water (read about this aquatic practitioner's experience on Aquapoetics).  Our vulnerability to this may often be traced to our birth and early childhood experiences.

The above quote comes from an interview movement therapist and Watsu practitioner Ophélie Goffart conducted with David Sawyer founder of Integrative Aquatic Therapy and the Prenatal Journey in Buggenhout, Belgium in 2006.  Download a copy here 

Topics covered include:

• why David Sawyer works with prenatal and birth topics

• how his work differs from traditional Watsu

• adult relationship patterns and prenatal/ birth themes

• how much talk therapy is included during aquatic sessions

 Read more

David Sawyer lives in Boulder, CO, USA and can be reached at d.sawyer@comcast.net

 Ophélie Goffert is the founder of Blue Vitae, an antenatal aquatic care method based in Paris. See more at BlueVitae and AquaRendezVous

Further explorations

Read this previous post on Aquapoetics: 

A Case Study by David Sawyer, LPC

More on childhood attachment issues and relationship problems:

The body speaks its trauma: nonverbal and preverbal expression (after Pat Ogden)

Caught fish or floating seaweed: signs of trauma in the water (after Diane Poole Heller)

Another aquatic therapist who has specialized in trauma relief is Diane Tegtmeier.  She explored the issue of boundaries in her book Relationships that Heal, using a cell membrane model. 

Read my book review here

Have you had personal or professional experience of boundary issues (positive or not so) while receiving or giving aquatic bodywork sessions? 

Comment below or join David Sawyer's upcoming training Prenatal Journey 1, Washington State, US

Finally, Aquapoetics poses:

8 Questions about working with trauma in aquatic bodywork

 

Watsu® research: where next?

 

A summary of the current scientific evidence-base for Watsu® cites only five studies. This post looks at the conventional approach to research and asks how we might expand our study models and conceptual frameworks to encompass all that is healing in aquatic bodywork.

Aquatic Therapy University has just published their current evidence-base for Watsu® (an excellent definition is provided) intended for clinical use (reimbursement information is given).  It can be downloaded from the website AquaticNet here.

Only five studies indicating positive affects for Watsu® in rehabilitation after stroke, cerebral palsy and disability in children and back pain are cited (1998 (2), 2007 and 2009(2)). This shows that there is a great deal of scope and need for further studies on the benefits of this practice.

In clinical practice, ATU notes that many insurers are beginning to deny 'aquatic therapy', in part, because clinicians themselves do not understand how to make the case for it by providing tangible evidence-based support. To this end, ATU offers courses designed to help participants:

• list the indications and precautions in the use of various modalities, including Watsu®
• understand the unique benefits of the aquatic environment, and use aquatic therapy techniques
• create a cohesive evidence-based argument supporting the use of aquatic therapy
• locate and summarize evidence-based research for aquatic therapy

(ATU's Aquatic Health Research Database lists more than 8000 articles of which the 5 cited in the document above represent a small drop.)
 
Clinical practice depends on insurance coverage for which evidence is important.  And in the spa industry, there is a growing call for scientific evidence for any benefits claimed. That said, it is important to understand that:

• lack of research does not necessarily mean lack of benefit
• research studies themselves can be limited in scope and insight
• good interpretation and appropriate application of research is what matters
  

Nonetheless, for anyone dealing with a specific health condition, some reassurance as to the cost-benefit of a particular kind of therapy conducted in water is obviously important.  In seeking wellness, the stakes may not be as high though marketers still see a value in evidence.

Water at the Heart of Intelligence: aquatic bodywork and heart coherence

Heart intelligence, subtle energies and the link with aquatic healing practices

by Sara Firman

Perhaps the greatest contribution of the HeartMath Institute  (IHM)  is its success in promoting recognition of the importance of heart-centered intelligence, especially in the corporate world and in education.  This has influenced my own work in water offering a form of aquatic bodywork based on Watsu® .  In At the Heart of Watsu Harold Dull, its creator, wrote beautifully about this.

From a more clinical perspective, aquatic bodywork has some well-established physical and physiological benefits for heart health.  In a valuable commentary Peggy Schoedinger, PT, and Watsu instructor, summarized the effects of aquatic bodywork on the heart and nervous system as follows. [Go here for more.]

At a thermoneutral pool temperature of 34-35 degrees C,  heart rate decreases and cardiac stroke volume increases.  Although heart rate decreases, the net effect is still an increase of more than 30% in cardiac output [1,2].  In addition,  Watsu-style bodywork has a balancing effect on the  autonomic nervous system (ANS) [3]. 

Researchers (like IHM) are finding that ANS imbalance is the basis for numerous disease processes and impairments, such as the increasingly prevalent fibromyalgia and post-traumatic stress disorder.  People who are trapped in their fight/ flight/ freeze response experience a physiological imbalance the effect of which is rather like pushing on the accelerator and the brake simultaneously.
 
In my experience of aquatic bodywork over several years, I came to recognize that there exist also far-reaching and little understood 'energy' effects in the healing potential of water.  In particular, the expanded awareness or altered state of consciousness that is possible with aquatic bodywork  is less-often acknowledged.

I believe, like the Institute of HeartMath, that

studies designed to advance our understanding of water's role as a bridge between the worlds of energy and matter will provide a crucial link between the realms of science and spiritual phenomena, bear profound implications for the betterment of human and environmental health, and may well help lay the foundations for a newly emerging scientific paradigm (IHM Research Center )

 

Integrative Aquatic Therapy (IAT) : - A Case Study by David Sawyer, LPC

Aquatic Integrative Therapy offers a complementary treatment for fertility and a profound means of supporting the psychological, spiritual and physical needs of a woman in the pre-conception process says aquatic therapist and teacher, David Sawyer.  Here are just some of the benefits of IAT he has observed and described over the past decade:

• a support to the pregnancy
• the relief of physical discomfort
• a bonding opportunity between mother and prenate
• a means to clear energetic patterns in the ancestral lineage
• gives the father a taste of the world in which his baby is living

This detailed case study is presented with the kind permission of David Sawyer, M.A., L.P.C.  It describes how Marie (not her real name) resolves family patterns, along with themes from her own pre- and perinatal history, affecting her psychological and physical readiness to bear a child - and successfully conceives.

David is the developer and creator of Integrative Aquatic Therapy (IAT), a blend of body mind therapies that is used to heal trauma and shock from the earliest stages of life, strengthen sense of self and establish healthy boundaries.

IAT is practiced in a warm therapy pool, using skills drawn from aquatic bodywork modalities such as Watsu®  and WaterDance. A multidisciplinary approach, it uses cutting-edge psychological understanding (Self-Psychology, Gestalt Psychology, Family Systems Theory, Pre and Perinatal Psychology).

I have written about David's work elsewhere on this blog.  See the end sections of  The body speaks its trauma: nonverbal and preverbal expression in water  and Deepening Core Awareness. Part 2: How aquatic bodywork can help with psoas trauma recover.

For more on David's background and contact information, please see the end of this post. 

Download IAT Training Program
Download Prenatal Journey Classes 2011

Interested in writing up your own case studies? See Writing case studies for aquatic bodywork (Watsu® and other modalities)

Further reading on Aquapoetics: 

Floating through pregnancy with aquatic bodywork

...........................................................................................................................................................
Marie's Child – A Case Study. By David Sawyer, L.P.C.

Integrative opportunity: trauma healing and aquatic bodywork

Because we've witnessed the power of trauma healing in water, we see an excellent opportunity for therapists from a wide variety of disciplines to expand and integrate their therapeutic repertoire. Aquatic therapists can get training in effective land-based trauma healing strategies. Talk therapists can learn the basics of aquatic bodywork to discover new ways of working with people in severe trauma. For example, several aquatic bodywork practitioners have sought training in Somatic Experiencing or Energy Psychology to increase the effectiveness of their aquatic bodywork practices.  Mental health professionals, nurses and physical therapists have brought their respective skills into the water's warm embrace.  Because of this integration, many of those who suffer from Pre-natal trauma, PTSD and Dissociative Identity Disorder have found relief after years of trying other ways to heal their trauma. Diane Tegtmeier and Inika Spence

To round-up the recent series on the potential applications of aquatic bodywork in trauma healing, I am delighted to reproduce here with kind permission an article by aquatic bodyworkers and teachers Diane Tegtmeier and Inika Spence.  At the end, you will find links to more about and by these two experienced land-and-water healers.

Waking the tiger in water: trauma to tranquility

Aquatic bodywork and trauma healing: After Peter Levine, PhD. NICABM Seminar title: Healing Trauma Through Somatic Experiencing


This post is part of the series New treatments for trauma: a review with special reference to aquatics. (Subscribe to keep up with future posts here.)

When an aquatic bodywork client shows subtle shifts in posture, or parts of the body begin trembling, vibrating, pulsing, or moving in other ways, they may be showing signs of the somatic release of old trauma. This is a natural, healing response shared with other mammals. Peter Levine's Somatic Experiencing® method demonstrates why the body matters so much in trauma healing.  He also talks of a possible link with ecstatic states.

The yogi's judicious use of natural forces [kundalini] can be compared to the farmer who floods his fields one by one within their earthen banks, letting the water thoroughly drench the soil before breaking open a new channel into another.  For safety's sake, the yogi employs method and restraint so as to use nature's energy intelligently to gain wisdom.  BKS Iyengar Judicious use of natural forces (kundalini yoga)

Somatic Experiencing® is a body-awareness approach to trauma that is based upon the realization that humans have an innate ability to overcome the effects of trauma.   This is the seminar I was most looking forward to in the NICABM series; it was so popular that a repeat play was requested and 7,752 practitioners signed up representing countries all over the world.

Peter Levine outlined what animals can teach us about the experience and resolution of trauma and what it is about human biology in particular that can turn this natural response into pathology.  He related this to the neocortex, a part of the brain that is involved in higher functions such as sensory perception, generation of motor commands, spatial reasoning, conscious thought, and language.

When restrained, animals go into tonic immobility - they stop moving and lose muscle tone. If frightened before or after a traumatic event the immobility response can go on indefinitely. In people, fright can remain for a long time also, since the neocortex resists the response that moves someone out of immobility - 'fear of fear'.  It is important then to uncouple fear from immobility. 

To provide a metaphor for this, Peter invited listeners to look at their open hand, then make a fist - this is like trauma he said.  Opening that fist reveals your hand but where did the fist go?  Trauma recedes through this  rhythm of contraction and expansion (called 'pendulation' in Somatic Experiencing® terminology).  The fundamental aim of SE is to re-educate the neocortex to experience this natural healing rhythm. 

This immediately struck me as resembling one of the rhythms of aquatic bodywork where the whole body and its limbs are expanded out and folded in many times during a session.  In my post, Aquatic bodywork and trauma healing, Diane Tegtmeier describes pendulation as 'releasing and resourcing'.  She has incorporated this concept into the aquatic training program for trauma healing that she is currently developing with Inika Sati (a Somatic Experiencing® practitioner).

How a practitioner responds to someone who has entered a trauma state can affect their healing.  Peter Levine sees the immobility response as an 'arrest' after which an animal or person orients towards the danger and moves into fight-or-flight or seeks help. If someone is frightened as they come out of freeze (or the therapist working with them becomes afraid - postural and facial aspects of fear are immediately picked up), the trauma may be reinforced.

Deepening core awareness and the implications for aquatic bodywork, Part 3: Some ways of working with the psoas on land and in water (elsewhere on Aquapoetics) Extract:  Somatic Experiencing®. This body-oriented method of working with trauma, developed by Peter Levine, has been mentioned in Parts 1 and 2.  He believes that trauma is the result of physiology, not psychology, specifically our instinctual fight/ flight drives.  According to this approach, discharge of repressed emotions is not sufficient to address underlying developmental and psychophysiological stress.  A practitioner is trained to notice subtle shifts in posture or parts of the body trembling, vibrating, pulsing, or moving in other ways.  They then guide someone in following their internal sensations while staying very present....This technique appear to have much to offer as an adjunct to psoas-trauma healing, especially where resolution and reintegration is needed in addition to releases.  Read more.

Kundalini and trauma processing

At the end of this NICABM seminar with Peter, I was thrilled to hear his brief mention of the possible connection between effective trauma processing and the release of kundalini energy through the chakras of the body.  This link is something I've been exploring in the water also, as described in An aquatic kriya: the bodywave. 

He pointed out that some ecstatic states include combinations of sympathetic and parasympathetic arousal,  but without the fear that triggers trauma.   This brings me full circle to Bill O'Hanlon's insights into the positive value of trance in the first seminar of the NICABM series. Working in this arena requires skill and subtlety; and also a willingness to explore beyond the boundaries of conventional understanding.

Questions:  1. Have you used the 'releasing and resourcing' cycle in your own practice?  Give an example?  2. Do you have any thoughts on this possible link between ecstatic states and trauma? (Add your comments below. Please be careful to protect the confidentiality of clients in anything you share.)

I'll leave you with some extracts from further posts on Aquapoetics that explore kundalini, altered states,  shadow work, and energy healing in the context of aquatic bodywork and trauma work.  A full list of other posts I have extracted to use in this series on trauma is also given below.  Please enjoy browsing and commenting on the blog or writing to me wherever you feel inspired to do so.

An aquatic kriya: the bodywave (elsewhere on Aquapoetics) Extracts: I have a body that has tended to be physically expressive (especially in water) of the impact of not only physical but also emotional and spiritual experiences in my life.  From a difficult birth to the usual gamut of life challenges, I have found bodywork to be an intriguing way to bear witness to and (in my subjective experience) transform positively the negative effects these mind-body-spirit impacts have had.  The bodywave was an effect that opened me up to this 'healing' possibility more fully than I believe would otherwise have occurred. 

...

There is the additional curious finding that even though an outside person can see the distortions or twitches or jerks the person's body makes, the person themselves is often completely unaware of them. They go into a kind of trance state which seems to prevent 'normal' inhibition of these movements. It is possible that this is just a curious side-effect of nervous system dis-inhibition that occurs in some people and has no benefit or significance regards health or otherwise. It is also possible that it does have a benefit. So far, my informal questioning of those who have neuroscientific backgrounds has not produced any useful insights into this.*

In my own experience as a receiver, there have been phases during which my body repeated strange nervous system effects.  It's important to note that I am always aware of these effects, but I am able to allow them, and that this is a choice I make. After a certain time and repetition, and perhaps the consciousness I brought to them as body memories (reactions to trauma) that were no longer appropriate or necessary, most of these effects have stopped happening. I believe that this made a difference to me - a beneficial one. But it is no quick fix and it requires a certain willing surrender.  Also I can't prove the benefit, or that it was due to the water work.

*I now realize that these insights may be provided by the new studies of trauma and neurobiology.

Read more.

A return to the water (elsewhere on Aquapoetics) This is the first of a series of five posts inspired by my own personal aquatic therapy work as a receiver in 2009.  I worked with Inika Sati, Diane Tegtmeier and Sunheart, all practitioners based at Harbin Hot Springs, home of Watsu.  The series also takes my explorations of altered states, kundalini and shadow work to deeper levels. Extract: 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 its energy field can be attended to also.  Water offers such a setting.  Read more.

Pristine waters: murky depths (elsewhere on Aquapoetics) Extract: We ought to be as willing and capable of guiding someone through the murky, monster-ridden deep as we are at playing in the pristine, glistening realm of spiritual waters.  And for that, it's best to be well-acquainted with both places ourselves.....Ideally we hold space for both aspects when working in water since aquatic bodywork seems to trigger both transcendent and descendant experiences in people.  Read more.

Water bridges a therapeutic gap (elsewhere on Aquapoetics) Extract: Water is not only a bridge between energy and matter, but also between the conscious and unconscious minds, the rational and the emotional, waking state reality and altered states, and the subjective and objective realms.  Currently science does not know how to bridge this gap. Read more.

Go back:

• New treatments for trauma: a review with special reference to aquatics

• Bad trance to good trance: finding resource in the (aquatic) trance state ( after Bill O'Hanlon)

• Working on your own trauma history before working with others in the water (after Babette Rothschild)

• Fire and water: what happens in the brain during trauma (after Robert C. Scaer)

• The body speaks its trauma: nonverbal and preverbal expression (after Pat Ogden)

• Caught fish or floating seaweed: signs of trauma in the water (after Diane Poole Heller)

Select list of other posts on this blog mentioned in this review of trauma treatments (click link)