Water as Holistic Medicine
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Despite its essential physical attributes, we also turn to water for meditative moments, spiritual assurance and creative energy.
Just looking at expanses of water, whether the ever-moving ocean, or a still placid lake, can slow our breath and calm our minds. Meditation is a great healer, allowing us to reclaim our mental faculties from a busy and distracting world. It is not wasted time to sit and watch waves come in to the shore over and over (it’s almost a chant, really), or to look for the nuances in the surface of a lake alive with nature.
Water also connects us to the ages, and reminds us how lasting and important it’s been to human history. Think of the waterways of the world and their historical and spiritual importance: the canals of Venice (long ago and still used to navigate the city); the Mississippi River (the third largest in the world and key to the settlement of America); the Ganges River in India (where the ashes of the dead are carried on their journey). Visiting these places brings us in contact with the cultures that went before.
Waterfalls and running streams are endlessly fascinating in their movement (come to think of it, so is water from the bath faucet when filling the tub). With so many incarnations, from a trickle to a thundering deluge, water in motion is truly poetic and inspiring. Like looking for shapes in clouds, we can observe the myriad ways that water finds shapes, suddenly changes, then changes again seconds later. Getting a little lost in creative thought while playing with water can stimulate your brain in subtle ways that concentrating thought cannot.
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