Dear readers, to catch up anyone relatively new to my substack, I am including my original welcome post, with my reason for writing - and a little about me - and my second post, which includes some tips for connecting with your body in relation to nature. And, I encourage you to take a little time with reading. Let it be an embodied practice, feel the words land in your body, and begin to notice the continuum of inner and outer that you are. Love, Sabrina
Here’s today’s essay!
From my earliest memories, I felt very carefree and playful in water, lithe and agile in a way I didn’t initially feel on land. I loved to be in water, holding my breath and swimming as far as I could, doing somersaults, handstands, and body surfing. As a child I felt awkward and out of place on land. The embrace of water, the feeling of being held and supported, moved and carried, was perhaps my deepest sense of relationship – I could feel another presence enveloping me.
My life has been mysteriously shaped by the power of water. As a child growing up in southern New Jersey, I was cradled by the sand and tossed and turned in the great Atlantic Ocean, on the very same beach where my parents had met. My father had grown up in Ocean City, and we returned there every summer weekend. In the winters and during the week, we lived an hour inland at the edge of the Pine Barrens, in a small log cabin community that had once been a summer resort, with lakes that had been carved out of cranberry bogs encircled by sandy beaches and pine forests. We would glide through the lily pads in our canoes, or tip them over and play under them – through the holy waters of my childhood my body learned to feel pure joy, and when I began to dance I again experienced the fluidity of those waters, this time within me.
I think I must have felt I was a dolphin when I was young. In pools I would swim back and forth, staying under water the entire time. I liked being under the water more than above. When I did begin to dance in my thirties, I remember walking into the space where we danced, having just seen the movie The Big Blue with its underwater scenes of dolphins and whales. I felt as though we were underwater communicating through the medium of sound waves, just as these amazing creatures do. I began to realize my attraction to dance – the fluidity, the joy, the freedom – echoed my early experiences of playing in water.
The basic tendency of water, and of all living matter, as water is essential for life, is to unite its parts into a whole. This tendency to grow toward the wholeness of the sphere results in spiraling movement; everywhere in nature we see the spiral form. Both the fluids of our bodies and the streams, rivers, waterfalls and oceans of the earth move in spiraling patterns. I was tossed and turned like a rag doll by these spirals, loving to stay underwater as long as possible.
In his book, Sensitive Chaos, Theodor Schwenk writes:
Wherever water occurs it tends to take on a spherical form. It envelops the whole sphere of the earth, enclosing every object in a thin film. Falling as a drop, water oscillates about the form of a sphere. A sphere is a totality, a whole, and water will always attempt to form an organic whole by joining what is divided and uniting it in circulation.
. . . Every living creature, in the act of bringing forth its visible form out of its archetypal idea, passes through a liquid phase. Some creatures remain in this liquid state or solidify only slightly; others leave the world of water, densify, and fall to a greater or lesser degree under the dominion of the earthly element.
Our early developmental experience is informed by the properties of water. Linda Hartley in Wisdom of the Body Moving explains: The very structures of our body come into form through these spiral patterns of fluid movement. Our ability to move upon the earth is mastered in infancy through a spiralic process of development.
In our bodies the fluid systems are concerned with communication, nourishment, breakdown, renewal and defense, the process of change and transformation, the living and dying of each moment, writes Linda Hartley. They are the basis of our circulatory systems. Our blood, lymph, cerebrospinal fluid and cellular fluids are our internal rivers and oceans. These waters are the network through which all the parts of our body are interconnected, the arteries of the heart delivering nourishment to the cells through the capillaries, veins and lymph returning to the heart, and the cerebrospinal fluid through our spine. We are held and saturated by the loving embrace of water.
Theodore Schwenk also describes the rhythmic nature of the element of water:
Everywhere liquids move in rhythms. Countless rhythms permeate the processes of nature. Not only are the great currents and tides of the oceans subject to the rhythms of the seasons; every lake, pond, every well has its movements that fluctuate with high or low tides or according to other laws. All naturally flowing waters have their rhythms, perhaps following the course of the day, perhaps keeping time with longer seasonal rhythms. . . . .
(I referenced this quote in Sea of Rhythms as well, where I discussed rhythm from another perspective).
Living on a peninsula years ago, I wrote about the local rhythms of water and how they moved me:
For the past few years I have been living on the Point Reyes Peninsula, with a view of Tomales Bay out my living room window. The Pacific Ocean lies a few miles over the ridge. I have felt how tangibly place shapes us, how our surroundings reverberate through our bodies and interconnect us to nature.
What have I learned living at the intersection of ocean and bay and fog, waves on all sides undulating through my body? We are shaped and moved by nature, by life. To be wildly embodied is to be receptive to the land and the elemental influences in our immediate world. On a peninsula with the ocean to the west and the bay to the east, each of these waters responding to the pull of the moon, I relax and feel my internal landscape awash with tidal waves ebbing and flowing. My need for excitement is met in a deeper way. And there is the elemental surprise of the third body of water - the mysterious fog sliding in at dusk, embracing us with unexpected fresh wet air.
I swim in this ever changing landscape, my eyes following the tides from the windows of my home, my body swimming in the bay in warm weather, walking along the ocean whenever possible. We walk at night in the darkness, with a flashlight during the dark of the moon, then as her light grows, we walk in moonlit landscapes, excited to see the moon rise over the bay and reflect in the waters below.
I treasure the excitement of nature, feeling her moment to moment changes in my body, one moving world. Way past my menses I am still deeply affected by moon rhythms, moved by the bodies of water surrounding me, resonating in a primal fluidity - shaping, shifting, becoming.
Today I live on the California coast fifteen miles below Inverness, near a reef that divides Bolinas bay to the south and the ocean to the west. Standing on the point above the reef, I see the wave patterns move in different direction on each side. As I walk along the cliff path above the water, the roar of the ocean changes as I walk from bay to ocean. From day to day the waters change, reflecting the patterns of the wind and fog. These outer waters reverberate in my inner waters. Internally each of us is affected by the ever changing rhythms nearby us - our breathing patterns and emotions respond to the sound of water, or music, or the voices around us.
Years ago, a client handed me the amazing book by Masaru Emoto, The Message from Water. Emoto froze water crystals from streams and springs, as well as polluted waters, examining the crystalline structures under microscope. He also played different music to the water crystals, as well as speaking kindly and lovingly, or abusively, to various samples. The results were startling, showing clearly how pollution affects the crystalline structures, as well as how quality of thought impacted the water. The receptive nature of water revealed itself in how it was affected by its environment, creating crystalline shapes of stunning beauty when positively affected, or disintegrating into dark and muddy images when negatively affected.
Oceans, bays, lakes, streams and rivers - water surrounds and moves us through her rhythms - and inside we move in continuous resonance. We are in continuous rapport with the many waters around us. We are in mutual resonance. By focusing on the waters within and their inherent receptivity, we become more fluid, feeling the rhythmic, flowing nature of water shaping the way our bodies move. Perhaps find a body of water nearby and be with its presence, notice the felt sense of it within you.
Recently I woke from a dream in which I was being instructed to feel the sea in my bones. Another time I wrote the words sun shimmering in my bones to describe an experience of golden energy flowing through my body. The bones are our internal support; the marrow is the rich inner sea of the bones, the molten core, and creates the energetic connection between the bones. Embodying the inner support of the bones, we become more connected to the flow of energy in the body. And as we embody, aware of the outer within, our identity structure becomes increasingly flexible and fluid, open to the larger world. Life is always moving us towards embodying the whole - the flow of the universe.
That which fills the universe I regard as my body, and that which directs the universe I see as my own nature. Chang-Tzu circa 370 B.C.
Thank you for joining me here today!
Sabrina Page, MA in Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness. My background includes working with individuals and groups, with a focus on somatic inquiry and embodiment to support you in living life fully, freely, and fluidly, intertwined with nature. As well, I have studied movement, dance and astrology with some of the leading individuals in their fields. My private sessions are offered on zoom, phone, or in person in Bolinas, Ca.
More information is available on my website, sabrinapage.com
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Sabrina, i confess i only got through half - and promise to finish when i actually can. Again, your whimsy...makes me sigh with a longing for what i haven't lived since the beginning of time, when streaming among my ancient water pod...
another jersey girl, huh? well, i was north, closer to New York. Not much beach action...BUT in 2006 as part of advanced CranioSacral with Upledger, i attended/assisted the dolphin-partnered therapy intensives 9in the bahamas where it was "legal" to touch dolpjoins), where the dolphins came in to treat our patients all morning for a week. They liked working with Upledger much more than jumping through hoops for tourists...and they knew how to get out of the pen at night, but always came back in the morning for breakfast, giggling just outside the gates...