An account of the creative potential of aquatic bodywork for inspiring the artist in each of us.
Water has been associated with the creative unconscious. In the form of aquatic bodywork I practice (based on Watsu), I've found it possible to travel beyond consensual reality and back again: between these two places is the warm-water womb, the sacred pool, a portal to dreamtime.
I use gentle massage and motion while suspending a person in warm water to open the body to the messages of the unconscious. When the body is permitted its expression and intelligence, creative insights or solutions may arise of their own accord. There is opportunity for profound shifts in awareness.
As a practitioner of aquatic bodywork, I seek out the creative in myself and the responsive in others so as to participate in natural or spontaneous form. Describing my work as art rather than therapy reminds me that we are involved in a dance of life and can neither control nor anticipate outcome.
The artist-shamanist* who takes a mysterious and imaginative view of human experience, allowing for chaos, for unpredictability, and the inexplicable, is my role model. Sometimes it seems that an ancient birthing ritual or baptism into life is being enacted. The water is the facilitator of it all.
Originating in the primal soup, nurtured in the watery womb, made mostly of liquid substance ourselves, the aquatic experience can be a homecoming. In water, more primitive brain functions begin to surface - archetypes, feelings, sensate awareness, somatic memories - allowing access to our deeper selves.
Often the experiences a person has during water sessions are preverbal and must be elaborated in much the same manner as dreams. The best way to reflect such images and fantasies is through artistic expression and my hope is that this work will be recognized as a valuable tool for creativity.
The experience extends beyond the physical, integrating mind and spirit in ways that will be unique to each person. The receiver usually has their eyes closed throughout and because their ears are immersed below the water's surface, they drop most easily into their inner being.
Creating artful space
To set the scene for a deep journey into the unconscious it is essential to create artful space. The pool is a sanctuary, and soft lighting and sacred symbols enhance that. Preparatory cleansing activities such as sweat lodge or hot-cold plunge pools, and other forms of bodywork may be helpful.
Music played through speakers in the water is useful in creating an atmosphere conducive to journeying and in encouraging a variety of emotions. Silence can be even more powerful in that it allows inner sounds to arise from the dream world without prompting.
Light and color around, on, or in ,the water are also evocative of different feeling states and can be used to deepen the experience. Aromas such as sage, incense, or essential oils, complete the sensory panoply. All these affect individuals differently and are best chosen with the involvement of the receiver.
Describing the indescribable
Finally, supported in the arms of the practitioner, with eyes closed and ears immersed the receiver enters a watery world of heightened sensory awareness. Contact with the surrounding water provides proprioceptive, kinesthetic, then imaginative stimuli to which one's whole being responds spontaneously.
All around you the water presses in so imperceptibly that you are not just immersed in it but saturated with it. It seems you are blending with the water, enhancing its flavor, stirring yourself into an elixir of undilutable energy. The boundaries between you and the outside world are dissolving.
And in this merging, you have the opportunity of surrendering, of dying to your habitual self. A creative dance arises when the motion of the body is directed by the non-ego, when we do not impose our will on form but move in a way that is spontaneous and uninhibited.
Often this is easier to achieve in the water than on land since the effects of gravity and surface traction are greatly diminished. There is sheer delight in being able to move freely and yet with the confidence of being fully supported.
Defying time and space in water
There is a sense of moving through time and space, as experienced in the body physically or in past memories and future imaginings. Using movements and stillness in varying patterns and rhythms the practitioner seems to guide a person in an exploration of space and time.
Very often, when suspended openly in warm water, space seems unlimited and without boundary. Closer holds provide a contrasting sense of security and containment. Time seems to stand still or become endless.
When time and space take on these cosmic characteristics, we are thrust into new dimensions of experience. We become aware of different energy levels and their interrelationship. Drifting in warm water we may feel ourselves slip through the surfaces of all resistance, whether physical, mental or emotional.
In water, your have a sense of life in continual motion, meeting no obstruction. It can seem as if your very cells, like photons, are at once particles and waves of light - a soup of motile molecules. You are made up of breathing bubbles and dancing lights.
Your body smiles as it slips along blue spirals in celebration, spinning into delicious curves and swirls. At one and the same time you are laughing bubbles of bliss up to the surface of your known self, and crying into the unfathomable waters.
Colors come flooding in behind your eyes - soaking into your psyche. The images that arise as you journey in this dream world are endless and it is both rewarding and enlightening to capture them in poetry or painting.
Some examples of such artwork can be found on this website.
* For more on shamanic aspects, see my article, 'Dancing in Healing Waters' Shamans Drum Magazine (issue 62, 2002, pp. 17-27).
A poem by Sulis written after giving an aquatic bodywork session.
