Aquapoetics

Aqua for Balance: wellness with water

 




Aqua4Balance is a unique web resource that has been spreading the word about water as a significant part of the wellness movement. The information is presented in a bright, clear and thorough way.  It certainly reflects all that is healing about water.

The inspiration behind it is Hanni Sem from Israel who describes herself simply as an aquatic bodywork practitioner, graphic designer, and globe-trotter. All these influences are apparent in the website which provides easy, inspiring and informative access to a wealth of water wellness.

'From Water to Water with Water' is Hanni's live-by mantra.

Here are two starting points for diving into the multi-linked information provided on Aqua for Balance:

The aqua-holistic approach to therapy

Quote: The Aqua-holistic approach to therapy uses the healing power of water as an arena for thermal aquatic bodywork aimed at physical, emotional, and spiritual well being, along with holistic land therapies and activities.  Read more here

Thermal aquatic bodywork

Quote: Thermal Aquatic Bodywork consists of an exercise and therapy program performed in body temperature water. This beneficial form of bodywork is recognized for its potential to promote well-being, reduce anxiety and alleviate chronic pain.  Read more here

If you're on Facebook, there's an Open Group for sharing more from Aqua for Balance and the wider community of those interested and/or involved in aquatic therapies.  Go here

If you're involved in Aquatics, you might like to add your information to the Links page.  Go here

Thank you Hanni for your work on behalf of water and wellness!

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 )

 

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.

Homo sapiens meet H. empathicus meet H. aquaticus

Homo sapiens meet Homo empathicus* meet Homo aquaticus

Elsewhere on this website, I have written that '[t]his is the story of my journey from science to soul through water'.  You'll find plenty of evidence for my ambivalence about its insistent pull, yet science has never quite let go of my tail.

A glance through my Special Series of blogs posts on Aquatic esoterica and Healing or therapy? will illustrate this quite well.    I suspect that it sometimes leaves a few people wondering where exactly I do stand - for or against?
 

 I'm lucky to have found a fellow explorer in my partner Joe Landwehr, also a scientist by training, whose healing modality is astrology.  He recently posted a series on his blog entitled Why astrology is not a science which had a Forum of his colleagues up in arms for weeks.  

You've got to be brave to question the power and omnipotence of science.  Many will assume you are anti-science and by definition lacking in cognitive intelligence or deluded by magical thinking.

So, when I came across Larry Dossey's brilliant lead article 'A Challenge to Science' (Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing July/ August 2010 (Vol. 6, Issue 4, Pages 197-214) - it felt as if all that I'd wanted to say or have said was right there in front of me.

There can be no better way to share where I stand with you, than by asking you to read that article.  

Extract:

For many years I've kept a file I call The Letter [write's Dossey], in which I save the written communication and e-mails I've received from premed and medical students over the years. There is a common theme among them. They describe how the student is dissatisfied with the overwhelmingly materialistic, physically oriented educational system he or she is in. Can I suggest a medical school where a broader view is supported? Where faculty members understand and address the evidence for the role of meaning and mind mediated effects in healing?

  

 Larry Dossey quotes Jeremy Rifkin, the man who coined Homo empathicus, frequently in his article.  For more fascinating insights read also Empathic Civilization: When Both Faith And Reason Fail, Stepping Up To The Age of Empathy.

Extract:

If empathic consciousness flows from embodied experience and is a celebration of life--our own and that of other beings--how do we square it with faith and reason, which are disembodied ways of looking at reality and steeped in the fear of death.

Finally, to bring us back to the water, here is a short extract from my own writing, Liquid in Motion: water as healer, on the embodied experience that is aquatic bodywork for me:

Aquatic bodywork has shown me that  I have a deeply resonatory nature, a melodious underwater life, in which all my experiences are embedded like beautiful overtones.   There is much scope for both scientific research and creative expression in the experience of aquatic bodywork.  Perhaps through such studies we can reflect back to water the life-giving properties it so freely lends to us.

See also Water Bridges a Therapeutic Gap

 

Copyright Notice applies to all content on this blog

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  This work by Sara Firman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

 

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.

Deepening core awareness: Maya healing

As I was preparing to finalize the previous three-part series on psoas trauma, I remembered a friend's recent experience with a prolapsed uterus.  Her doctors had suggested hysterectomy but she successfully and quickly treated her condition with Maya abdominal massage, a method that offers ongoing self-care.

I felt compelled to experience this during a visit to Chicago where I discovered Moira Scullion, a licenced massage therapist of over 10 years' experience who specializes in the Arvigo Techniques of Maya Abdominal MassageTM  (MAM) and in Maya Spiritual Healing. 

For more: Arvigo healing practices and Maya healing tradition.

My 2 h introductory session with Moira, has inspired this addendum to the psoas series.  Appropriately, the appointment was on a wild and wet Thursday which, along with Friday, is considered the best for spiritual bathing rituals (see book reference below).  As you will read I did have a sprinkling bath!

Moira's website indicated that she works with 'the core of the body to release old patterns of emotional and physical holding' which sounded very relevant to the exploratory healing journey I was writing about.  The experience turned out to be profound on all levels - physical, emotional and spiritual - for me.

The background of Moira's teacher added another point of interest since Dr. Rosita Arvigo is the co-author of a book I have long had in my aquatic library called Spiritual Bathing: Healing rituals and traditions from around the world.  The water connection felt auspicious.

Deepening core awareness and the implications for aquatic bodywork: Part 3

This post is the third and last in a series on working with psoas trauma.  Reading Part 1 and Part 2 first is essential.

Part 1: Personal experience of psoas trauma

Part 2:  How aquatic bodywork can help with psoas trauma recovery

Part 3: Some ways of working with the psoas on land and in water

Deepening our core awareness we enter the influence of water.  It is imprinted in all form and it is by exploring ourselves as fluid beings that we enter into a deeper level of movement awareness and life. Liz Koch, Core Awareness:  Enhancing Yoga, Pilates, Exercise and Dance, 2003, p. 74.

PART 3: Some ways of working with the psoas on land and in water

The ideas I have shared in Parts 1 and 2 of this series on psoas-related trauma, including those gleaned from the work of others, are presented in a context of inquiry based on my personal experience as someone troubled by psoas issues and likely underlying trauma, and also on my professional observations as a massage and movement therapist with a special interest in aquatic bodywork.  They are not  intended to suggest definitive methods for working with someone who has psoas-related trauma.  Please be very careful with such work. 

If you believe you have psoas-related problems, please check this out with your preferred health professional.  Treat yourself with as much care as I hope the previous posts (Parts 1 and 2) have indicated may be warranted.  Below I have summarized some of the practices that have been helpful to me in my ongoing explorations of this.  Though I cannot take responsibility for your use of these suggestions and their possible outcome, I sincerely hope that if you do try them you will find them beneficial.  Please comment or share your experience below or by email.

Deepening core awareness and the implications for aquatic bodywork: Part 2

This post is the second in a series of three on working with psoas trauma in the water.  Reading Part 1 first is essential (see link below).  You'll also find an ongoing link to Part 3 at the end of this post.

Part 1: Personal experience of psoas trauma

Part 2:  How aquatic bodywork can help with psoas trauma recovery

Part 3: Some ways of working with the psoas on land and in water

Deepening our core awareness we enter the influence of water.  It is imprinted in all form and it is by exploring ourselves as fluid beings that we enter into a deeper level of movement awareness and life. Liz Koch, Core Awareness:  Enhancing Yoga, Pilates, Exercise and Dance, 2003, p. 74.

PART 2:  How aquatic bodywork can help with psoas trauma recovery

The safety and sensitivity of water

In this Part, I describe some of the insights others have had into working with body-based trauma responses, and relate this to my personal and professional experience in the water.

Here is what Liz Koch has to say about safety when releasing psoas-affecting trauma, and the issue of repetitive behavior  (Psoas Health: Trauma Recovery Protocol, Massage and Bodywork Magazine):

Once instinctively safe, the body naturally begins to shake and discharge stored energy.  With deeper levels of safety, the body spontaneously releases deeper levels of holding.  Without the resolution, repetitive behavior is the only means for the encoding to attempt to release the trauma.

Palpating the psoas muscle of traumatized clients can immediately reevoke the trauma defense mechanism because the psoas muscle is still activated.  Instead of evoking relaxation, palpating the psoas due to its instinctive functioning results in a conflict of psychosomatic interests.  The client wants to relax into the healing massage of the psoas while simultaneously contracting against the invasive procedure.  This conflict causes a repetition of the somatic elements of the trauma experience.

Palpating this deep muscle is hard enough to do on land and perhaps impossible to achieve in aquatic bodywork since the body cannot be pinned against any surface or push against resistance itself (as in PNF - see Parts 1 and 3) and may easily escape from such an 'invasion'.  This suggests that working in water could be safer.  What can be done in water, is to enable follow-through (sometimes called unwinding) of the psoas's  influence on the body's structural integrity, and also to use energy-based touch to initiate and facilitate its releases.  I have found both approaches to be highly effective with psoas issues.

Deepening core awareness and the implications for aquatic bodywork: Part 1

 

This post is the first in a series about working with psoas-related trauma in the water and also on land.  Reading Parts 1, 2 and 3 in order is important. You'll find a link to Part 2 at the end of this one.

Part 1: Personal experience of psoas trauma

Part 2:  How aquatic bodywork can help with psoas trauma recovery

Part 3: Some ways of working with the psoas on land and in water

Deepening our core awareness we enter the influence of water.  It is imprinted in all form and it is by exploring ourselves as fluid beings that we enter into a deeper level of movement awareness and life. Liz Koch, Core Awareness:  Enhancing Yoga, Pilates, Exercise and Dance, 2003, p. 74.

PART 1: Personal experience of psoas trauma

Losing my ground

Core awareness is not only influenced by water, it is also a sense of self connected to the earth, writes psoas expert Liz Koch.  In late July, I fell down twice.  I lost my ground in a manner that I can no longer afford to explain away.  I could say it was because a few weeks back I lifted a very large log for stacking and strained my right-side quadratus lumborum muscle which in turn put stress on my right psoas muscle, strongly torqued my pelvis, and trapped a nerve.  But it reminded me of something that I've been slowly inching towards for at least a decade now.  In this series of posts, I will share parts of that exploration.

The 'core' of the body spans from the solar plexus to the upper thigh bone. Core muscles run along the spinal vertebrae and traverse this 'belly brain'. These are the psoas [pronounced so-as] muscles and they are key to the body's stuctural integrity and movement, as well as protecting its inner strength and  energy.  It is a place of power and wisdom according to many Eastern body systems, where it is referred to as hara, dantien, solar plexus chakra, and so on.

The psoas also functions like an hydraulic pump, enhancing circulation throughout the body.  As an internal shelf, it lends important diagonal muscular support to abdominal organs and nerve ganglia.  The kidneys lie on top of the psoas and the reproductive nerves are embedded within it.  I've demanded a lot of the psoas muscle complex in my life habits and perhaps also because I have an exceptionally long back relative to my limbs.  My lifestyle combines the sedentary (long hours of writing) with the very active (including yoga and dance), making me further vulnerable to psoas misuse.

Illustration: The psoas muscle attaches to the 12th thoracic vertebrae (approximately at the level of your solar plexus) and to each of the lumbar vertebrae. The muscle moves through the pelvis and inserts into the inner thighbone at the lesser trocanter.

This hidden muscle group appears to play a major role in trauma and trauma recovery. Its significance in good times and bad is often overlooked, perhaps because it lies so deep within us. Serving as a bridge, it connects the physical to the emotional and the spiritual to the ordinary according to those who, like Liz Koch, take an holistic view of the human being.  Working with it can bring a deluge of unresolved fear to the forefront of your consciousness.  In the long run it could provide an opening to instinctive wisdom too.  In my personal and professional experience, both are true.

Inspired by Liz Koch (though I have yet to study with her directly), I've been sharing my understanding of this keystone muscle in my movement classes for some years now.  Yet, its personal impact once again unnerves me.  Not only because my body structure is similar to that of my mother who had a hip replacement five years after experiencing falls like mine.   But also because I sense there is more to this recurring discomfort, and that more serious outcomes (see Box) could be preventable.  My core is calling me to give it greater attention and take far more care.

Water bridges a therapeutic gap

Back in 585 BC, the mathematician Thales predicted mathematically the precise time of an eclipse.  He concluded that all natural phenomena had rational causes that didn't depend on deities.  This event, wrote astrologer Joe Landwehr in The Seven Gates of Soul (p.95), marked the  beginning of the scientific revolution that would ultimately deny the existence of the soulful life. 

Thales still drew inspiration from the world view he was trying to escape. He believed that the principle substance that governed nature and composed it's essence was Water.  In his book on the 6000-year history of soul, Joe went on to point out that Thales is reputed to have said: 'All is water and the world is full of gods'  proclaiming the omnipresence of soul that he had tried to rationalize away. 

Joe, my partner, is a great sounding board for my thoughts and ideas, including those on aquatic bodywork and spa culture, though both fields are quite new to him.  Like me, he has followed a rather unconventional career path - beginning in science and then finding it could not provide the answers to some of his deeper questions about the meaning of life.

Recently, Joe commented on my last post How to investigate aquatic altered states of consciousness.  I have compiled his input below since I think it provides a valuable and interesting extension of the issues raised there. I encourage you to join in too by commenting below either post or Email me here. 

'Without quantifiable measurement, science is lost', notes Joe but so much that is important in healing or therapy cannot be measured or quantified.