Aquapoetics

Inspiration: Oceanic craniosacral arts

Craniosacral therapy works with the fluidic rhythms in the body (specifically the cerebrospinal fluid) and it can be a wonderful skill to apply to aquatic bodywork.  See more on this blog: 'Quotes: Craniosacral therapy in water' and 'An aquatic kriya: the bodywave' (towards the end).

The wonderfully watery extract below is best read aloud or even better read to you (try the 'Listen Now' button).  It comes from an article by Candice Marro which was published in the Cranial Wave Magazine (2003) and can be read in full on The Craniosacral Therapy Education Trust (UK) website. 

Thanks to craniosacral therapist and artist Ray Lacey  for introducing me to this beautiful article and also for his kind permission to share his gently pulsating image 'Blue'.  Ray is inspired by the way in which art informs therapy and vice versa.  To learn more about his work, please visit his website, Craniosacral-Art.

'From the sea of impermanence to the still heart of the ocean

How to give it a try? You are going to use your hands as the servants of your heart. Your hands will be the eyes, ears and medium of your heart; not your confused and emotional heart but the heart of your heart, your Still Heart, your all-knowing and all-encompassing Heart. What is the gateway to this place within yourself?

Find a neutral, a place within you where there is balance, calmness, availability. There is always such a place but not always the same one. Search for that place and settle into it. Let the neutral gradually spread to your whole system. Then open to your friend on this journey, this friend who is going to be both your client and your teacher.

This is it, you have found a sense of stability within yourself and you have established your fulcrum, casting the anchor that will provide a sense of safety on your journey. Now open your perceptual field to the third presence that will be with you both, that is generated by your coming together: the relationship. Then start your exploration.

Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. Leave your fears and uncertainty behind, focus on your breath until you meet or are being met by The Breath, a deeper and slower inhalation and exhalation. The Breath breaths through you - actually it is breathing you. Can you feel it?

Stay with it. You are now invited to follow the cycles of primary or universal respiration. You are invited to trust the Breath of Life. Yes, the Breath that carries Life expressed to you as motion. This primary respiration leads you into the realm of life forces and principles. Let yourself be rocked by the long immutable rhythm of primary respiration. It is your fundamental support, a living presence that has always been there and will never cease.

Can you feel a shift happening? Can you feel your confusion, your noise and your fears now floating into the distance? Can you feel the relationship is orienting you both towards a place of resource, a place where the different layers of function work as a unit and are interdependent? However, this is not yet the place where you are One. But here, at least, you are not fragmented anymore. You are still in contact with tissue memory, symptoms and shapes but something more is there: organising forces.

In this realm you have allies: fluids and the potency within fluids. Yes, you can start to sense potency within the fluids, the ocean. Fluids that pass everywhere, go around any obstacles and patiently try to erode the barriers. And there is the fluid at the core of all fluid: a golden, subtle, potentized fluid that will teach you to be an alchemist. Can you now feel that your hands have become like antennas, more receptive, more empowered and potentized? Do you notice that one part echoes the whole, that the smallest fragment in the system is vital to the whole and plays a key role in maintaining balance?

But beware for these fluids are being moved and crossed by deep forces at work that you now start to feel; deep forces of creation, forces of health and forces of inertia. The fluid may be your ally provided that you learn its language, know how to work with it and know the nature of these forces that move it.' Candice Marro 2003

This wonderful piece of writing also inspired another post on my weblog Diving Deeper: 'Do you have a quest?'.

Review: Bodyway as in Waterway

  

This extract from Mirka Knaster's valuable book on body-oriented practices, Discovering the Body's Wisdom, uses water as its metaphor for the constant change and movement (circulatory and interrelating) that characterizes the life of a human body.  Mirka writes:

There's a lot of name-calling in the field of body practices.  It's not mud-slinging, but a habit of differentiating and labeling.  Some practitioners are engaged in bodywork.  Others consider their approaches therapy.  Still others say they're neither, but rather somatic education, movement awareness, structural integration, or even emotional integration. ...

To get around the divisions in the field, I created the term bodyways.  It broadly incorporates therapy and education as well as relaxation, while still allowing for each separate category of  practice and its distinguishing characteristics.  I chose way (from the Old English wegan, "to move") because it suggests a pathway or process, as in waterway.

Think of the many different waterways through which water moves: creeks, streams, rivulets, rivers, channels, brooks, rills, seas, oceans, bays, sounds, and lakes.  All of the bodyways involve movement, and often the least effortful way can bring about the most ease.  Life is, after all, movement.  We are living bodies, always in process. As 70 percent water, we are in constant flux, just like a stream.  And just like a stream receives water from various sources, so too do we take in new information from a variety of bodyways.

From Discovering the Body's Wisdom: A Comprehensive Guide to More than Fifty Mind-Body Practices that can Relieve Pain, Reduce Stress, and Foster Health, Spiritual Growth, and Inner Peace by Mirka Knaster,   p. xv-xvi (Bantam Books, 1996).

Celebrating water at summer solstice

In the spirit of an extraordinary event Live Water all over the world this summer solstice weekend ...

Please enjoy these posts on my other blogs!

On the Aquatic Social Network:

Water and Creativity:  Solstice celebrations

On Diving Deeper:

The Water that I Carry (poem by Sulis)

On Vision Spa Retreat:

Summer solstice celebrating water worldwide

And, if aquatic therapy is your passion or your business, join me in the AquaticNet social network.

Inspiration: Take me to the water

Though I don't suggest you turn your aquatic bodywork sessions into baptisms, I've just enjoyed this fascinating recently released collection and thought I'd share a quote about the 'peak experience' that is water ...

Whether you have ever actually experienced a baptism or not, whether you are a believer or not, these pictures and the music that accompanies them transmit all the emotional information: the excitement and the serenity, the fellowship and the warmth, the wind and the water.  They are about theatre, pageantry, holiday; inclusion, transformation, enveloping love and transporting joy.  They show a great many people in the midst of one of the peak experiences of their lives.  Even the calmest scenes are electrified by the ecstacy of the actors.  You would have to have  heart of tin not to recognize this as one of the happiest collections of archival photographs ever assembled.

From an Essay by Luc Sante in Take Me To the Water:  Immersion Baptism in Vintage Music and Photography 1890-1950, Dust-to-Digital, Atlanta, Georgia 2009

A friend who is also a field music recordist recently lent me his copy.  The quote really does capture the essence of this wonderful presentation of photography along with a CD containing songs and sermons.  It reminds me that our relationship with water is a deeply emotional and spiritual one, and is expressed in many different contexts. 

The significance of water manifests itself differently in different religions and beliefs but it is perhaps the following two qualities of water that underlie its place in our cultures and faiths.

• water cleanses. It not only purifies objects for ritual use, but can make a person clean, externally or spiritually, ready to come into the presence of his/her focus of worship.

• without water there is no life, yet water has the power to destroy as well as to create. We are at the mercy of water just as we are at the mercy of our God or gods.

Quote: Water is the most soul-like

Water is the most soul-like in its association with the vast underground of the unconscious; the realm of emotions, imagination and fantasy; sexuality; and creative and procreative fertility; the mystical web of interconnection which ties us to this earth and to each other; and a distinctly feminine worldview rooted in an attitude of surrender to mysterious forces beyond the reach of will or reason.

Joe Landwehr, The Seven Gates of Soul: Reclaiming the poetry of everyday life (p.95)

Read Joe's commentary on science and soul in relation to therapy and aquatic bodywork.

Inspiration: Conscious fluidity

In recent posts, I have been exploring how aquatic bodywork might affect state of consciousness.  This extract from Ken Keyes book The Handbook of Higher Consciousness which has been a bible of sorts for some people offers some interesting watery metaphors.

When you are heavily addicted, your experience of 'self' is solid like a block of ice.  When you have succeeded in reprogramming almost all of your addictions into preferences, your 'self' loses it rockness and begins to have the adaptability and clarity of water.  When one is operating primarily on preferences, the hardness melts and instead there is a conscious fluidity.  In this state, like water, your sense of 'self' is infinitely flexible to accommodate itself to your here-and-now surroundings... For the few intrepid explorers of the mountain of consciousness who wish to go to the top, even preferences must be reprogrammed. [At this level] even the fluid self boundaries disappear.  As water evaporates, it becomes a transparent vapor.  Similarly, at the highest level of consciousness, the experience of 'self' or 'somebody' disappears, we become 'nobody' - which then lets us be in unitive space with everybody. Ken Keyes, The Handbook of Higher Consciousness, p. 128-129

Health and fluid movement: insights from biodynamic massage

From an article originally published in The Journal of the Association of Holistic Biodynamic Massage Therapists Vol.7 Issue No.1 Winter 2003/2004 ISBN 146-3743) Gill Westland, posted on the website for the Cambridge Body Psychotherapy Centre.

Biodynamic Massage:  Theory

[Gerda Boyesen who developed this method] has uniquely described tissue armouring within the body psychotherapy field. She recog­nised that ill health seemed to be consistent with lack of fluid movement and stagnation in the body, and health with fluid movement. She observed that 'dry' tissues (i.e. skin, connective tissue, muscle) seemed to lack fluid. She also noticed that sometimes parts of the body have swollen, warmer, red tissues. This is in the absence of any infection. It is as if there is an excess of fluid and the fluid creates internal pressure. Individuals with this symptomology often describe themselves as feeling under pressure and jittery. This situation is known as distension pressure.

Sometimes tissues can be swollen, but the skin colour ranges from brown to grey or white and it is cold to the touch. This is called transudation pressure and is tissue armouring. It is a more chronic patterning. People with depressive illness, for example have a preponderance of transudation pressure.

Reich saw that fluid draws energy; and energy draws fluid. If there is stagnant fluid there is impeded flow of energy and conversely, if energy flows, so does fluid. Boyesen recognised that the 'solution' was to invite the emptying off of excess fluids and to draw fluid into drier areas of the body. The fluids are central to self regulation and are fundamentally involved with the inherent wisdom to heal and connect with essential health.

Apart from tissue armouring, Gerda Boyesen's other unique contribution is the theory of psychoperistalsis. She noticed that when clients had tummy rumblings during sessions that there seemed to be therapeutic benefits. She began to work with an extended stethoscope to listen more intently to the sounds and gradually developed her theory that the guts not only digest food, but also regulate affect. Again she speculated that excessive fluid in the intestinal walls, the distention pressure, stimulated the peristaltic activity. So biodynamic massage therapists often work with an electronic stethoscope. This gives the therapist feedback and guides the therapeutic process.

Quotes: A yogic river

In the spirit of the yogic theme of current posts, here are two water quotes - Inspirational Blessings from the blog of Guru Singh.  Please click here to read more.

An unbroken river

Relate to your existence as an unbroken river. You have been from the beginning before any beginning at all . . . you will exist until long after the end beyond any end could be . . . eternity has nothing to do with these measures.

Become the river, not a drop of its water . . . be forever (source to ocean), not (a drop) wondering or worried if you will make it to the ocean. All water makes it to the ocean — in fact — the 'river' is already at the ocean. Be the river . . . be already there.

The more you connect with . . . the more you relate from this perspective of guaranteed eventuality — the more you're strivings - your imaginings - and all your wantings will become; they will just become, as if they were [here] all along. The only thing that has changed is your awareness of their existence.

...

Posted by Guru Singh 4/8/2009

Immerse yourself in the river

Immerse yourself in the river of your existence. This is your identity and it is time to accept it in all of its parts . . . all of its places. This is the path of you becoming you.

By being the river—from the source at the head-waters to the ocean—your intuition increases exponentially. Use this intuition to remain as the river in the face of all the bubbles of illusion. Remain as this river; do not become enamored by the bubbles of your individual wonders. Make yourself comfortable in all your places and be as ease with all your wonders. ...

Posted by Guru Singh 4/17/2009

A water poem by W.B. Yeats

People often say they 'see' or feel like a dolphin while they are receiving aquatic bodywork.

Here is the middle section of a three-part poem by W.B. Yeats.  It immediately made me think of the wounds, ancestral patterns, and love that can all be part of the 'sweet and strange' experience of an aquatic bodywork session. 

News from the Delphic Oracle (1939) by WB Yeats

II

Straddling each a dolphin's back
And steadied by a fin,
Those Innocents re-live their death,
Their wounds open again,
The ecstatic waters laugh because
Their cries are sweet and strange,
Through their ancestral patterns dance,
And the brute dolphins plunge
Until in some cliff-sheltered bay
Where wades the choir of love
Proferring it's sacred laurel crowns,
They pitch their burdens off.

From William Butler Yeats: Selected Poems and Four Plays, ed. M.L. Rosenthal, 4th edn, Scribner, 1996

Your underwater breath (poem by Joe)

Poetry has always been associated with Valentines Day, and like Water it is the conveyer of deep emotions.  So, it is no surprise that many find in aquatic bodywork, a poetry in motion that inspires pure Love. I'd like to share here a beautiful poem by my partner Joe who has helped me recover my poetry, my passion for water, and my love.

       Your underwater breath by Joe Landwehr

The knowledge I am seeking
cannot be found in books,
cannot be written,
cannot be thought
without turning thought inside out
to reveal the gossamer thread of its underpinning –
nothing but air.

Air.

So where shall I find such knowledge?
You find it in the water, I know.
Can I find it there, too?

I wonder.

I want to say
“take this body I won’t need it”
but who am I fooling?

In these cells
is wisdom
or at least
something ancient,
tried and true
and without it where would I be?

Dead.

Instead,
perhaps I should ignite it
with your help

and see what I can see
in the blaze of its demolition.

The knowledge I am seeking
has been here forever,
but invisible to those who seek it.

Seek it I shall not.
Feel it in your underwater breath
blowing through my heart
I shall.