Aquapoetics

A pool is a portal: aquatic bodywork

For me, a pool is a portal and the water  the medium by which I can journey.  

There are no maps except those that are made as I go along - repatterning soma and psyche - exploring unfamiliar territory. 

I follow the shape of the sea-bed, where all my submerged experiences and all their hidden potential lies. 

Traveling lightly, discarding encumbrances along the way, letting life flow through me, I may begin to see another way of being.  

To journey well is to be neither passive nor active but responsive - like a river winding its way towards the sea. 

Diving deep into my unconscious, allowing the rising up of feeling, I taste freedom. 

My destination seems to be true destiny, not a defined outcome but an unfolding process. 

A long-lost dream.  Sulis (Sara Firman) of Aquapoetics

[Extracted from personal writings on the experience of giving and receiving aquatic bodywork.]

Comprehensive Aquatic Therapy

This book, just released, has been welcomed enthusiastically by clinical aquatic therapists.  It would also provide an important resource for those who don't work in clinical settings. 

See more on the book's website, where you can also purchase it.

'Watsu in Aquatic Rehabilitation' is covered by Peggy Schoedinger, PT, in Chapter 5.  Here is an extract:

For nearly 100 years aquatic therapy has progressed with the continual development and refinement of equipment and techniques to benefit patients in countless ways.  The progress has been like a tree expanding and growing branch after branch with remarkable benefits for patients.  Then in the 1980s an entirely new tree, known as aquatic bodywork, emerged and flourished, with Watsu as the main trunk.  In the field of aquatic rehabilitation, Watsu presented exciting new ways for therapist to treat patients in the water.  Watsu and evolving forms of related aquatic bodywork have propelled aquatic therapy into an entirely new direction - one that has added immensely to the benefits of aquatic rehabilitation for a wide variety of patient populations.

 

For some thoughts on the distinctions between aquatic therapy and aquatic bodywork see Faith and Facts in aquatics: a digest .

Peggy Schoedinger's website

The benefits of Watsu by Peggy Schoedinger

Isn't the cover of this new book beautiful!

 

Wave motion: Emilie Conrad

 

The human body has been spiraled from the vortical tendency of living water, an extension of the primordial ocean, appearing separate but maintaining constant resonance.

(Excerpted from Life On Land by Emilie Conrad)

If you love moving in water and have not come across the inspirational work of Emilie Conrad, founder of Continuum Movement, please do explore further.  A few years ago when I lived in Southern California I had the opportunity to spend a wonderful day with her in a movement class that was like no other. 

In a recent post on  Whole Woman, Moving Medicine, she articulates the language of water which is so inherent to our physical being and so much needed.  Few are able to translate the experiential into the written word so beautifully.  

It's also interesting that Emilie mentions sound in this article ... words as sound and sound as resonant with the water in our bodies.  Try her E exercise and see if you can sense 'internal fluid ... begin to spread similarly to an ocean wave extending toward the shore'.

Visit the Continuum website to enjoy more words on water and the body.

See also Liquid in Motion: Water as Healer on Aquapoetics.

And this post about another movement practitioner who has been inspired by water: Freeing the body in water: inspiration for self-care with Liz Koch

The image above is just a small section of Ripple#2 by Jamie McHugh.  The full piece can be seen on Continuum Movement's website.   For more incredible art visit Jamie's website, NatureBeingArt.

 

Freeing the body in water: inspiration for self-care with Liz Koch

Aquatic bodyworkers, like all bodyworkers need some good practices of self-care if they are to be able to offer their best. 

For example, Ai Chi was originally developed by Jun Kono to provide an effective warm-up practice for Watsu practitioners.  The stance, breathing patterns and easy flow provide a good way to initiate the strong but relaxed presence needed when giving a session. 

There is also a wonderful wind-down practice, demonstrated (by the 'psoas lady', Liz Koch) below.  It offers an unstructured way to release any remnant tensions in your own body and also let go of the energy of the person you have just worked with.

The role of water in modern holistic medicine: Norman Shealy

The video below is presented by MD Norman Shealy (June 2009) whose association with alternative medicine, alternative health care, holistic medicine, energy medicine and medical intuition in the US might be said to be legendary. 

Although Norman is now retired from clinical practice, his research and teaching is ongoing.  You can read more about him and his pioneering involvement in many innovative organizations, such as the American Holistic Medical Association on his website here.

My own interests introduced me to Holos University and to the American Board of Scientific and Medical Intuition (both inspired by Dr Shealy).  (An interesting side discovery has been that Dr Shealy and Holos are based in Missouri where I currently reside.)

I'm attracted especially by a 'balanced approach of self-development, scholarly exploration and research, and service that substantiate and integrate all three aspects of the body/mind/spirit healing triad' (Holos Mission statement). 

I continue to take this approach in my own study of aquatic bodywork.

Relationships that Heal: book review

You know how it is when you try to back out of a relationship - it keeps coming at you until you make peace with it.  Diane Tegtmeier

Relationships that Heal: Skillful Practice within Nature's Web. Natural Ethics for Today's Health Practitioner. Diane Tegtmeier, October 2009.  See below for how to buy.

If I were the kind of person who underlined 'aha' moments in books, my copy of this one would be thoroughly marked up.  For Diane is taking me on a rewarding hike through a familiar and challenging terrain.  Every step - every word - has the weight of experience behind it.

Although she has made this book very accessible to someone new to what she inclusively calls the 'helping profession', I think it is likely to speak most to those who have bravely battled their way through some of the slings-and-arrows of a few years in healing practice and in life.

Since bringing all her many skills to the water in the practice of aquatic bodywork is a central passion for Diane, there are numerous references to this particular healing modality.  However, setting it in a wider context and collaboration as she does here, is especially effective.

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.