"A Massage In The Womb" - Sunali
Being held in water the temperature of the womb:
comfortable, safe, and unconditionally loved.
Noticing the breath moving through you.
Surrendering your weight.
Recognizing the water's acceptance and support,
and its flow around and within you.
Feeling yourself swished & waved & stretched with the currents,
your tissues awakened and massaged, joints released, belly relaxed.
Not having any need to hold on. Or to think.
Safe to feel everything, even pain -- and just let it all go.
Yielding, to the recognition of what is always here. That sense
of being as the substance of everything, and of everything as one becoming...
Warm in safe arms, held and loved, empty and still
in the water.
comfortable, safe, and unconditionally loved.
Noticing the breath moving through you.
Surrendering your weight.
Recognizing the water's acceptance and support,
and its flow around and within you.
Feeling yourself swished & waved & stretched with the currents,
your tissues awakened and massaged, joints released, belly relaxed.
Not having any need to hold on. Or to think.
Safe to feel everything, even pain -- and just let it all go.
Yielding, to the recognition of what is always here. That sense
of being as the substance of everything, and of everything as one becoming...
Warm in safe arms, held and loved, empty and still
in the water.
A treatment unlike anything you've ever experienced.
Aquatic bodywork takes all the benefits of bodywork on a massage table, and compounds them with two profound elements: warm water, and being held.
Water is the medium in which we are gestated, and the primary component of our bodies. When we enter into water the same temperature as our skin, there is a welcome familiarity to it: our nervous systems are immediately soothed, and our bodies, minds and spirits receive the unmistakable message: "You're home now, it's time to relax." When we soak in warm water (the bath tub, a hot spring, a Watsu® pool...) the breathing expands and deepens, the heart rate slows, mental activity quiets; the muscles and viscera soften, the joints yield, fascia unwinds, and all of the body's systems release tension and come into more coherent balance. Just from quietly being in warm water.
Now add to all this the effects of being held weightless, with your eyes closed and ears beneath the surface. Of feeling your body completely supported; feeling yourself safely cradled in the arms of a caring human being; feeling another person's warmth, another heartbeat, another breath. Perhaps not since you were a child -- if even then -- have you been held in so much comfort, and with such completely focused attention and loving care. This type of deeply connected, unconditional holding (which Harold Dull, developer of Watsu®, calls "rebonding") is something that each of us profoundly craves -- whether consciously or not. We seek the re-connection with the mother, and a return to the all-encompassing embrace, safety and watery warmth of the womb, where our bodies and physical awareness began.
Water is the medium in which we are gestated, and the primary component of our bodies. When we enter into water the same temperature as our skin, there is a welcome familiarity to it: our nervous systems are immediately soothed, and our bodies, minds and spirits receive the unmistakable message: "You're home now, it's time to relax." When we soak in warm water (the bath tub, a hot spring, a Watsu® pool...) the breathing expands and deepens, the heart rate slows, mental activity quiets; the muscles and viscera soften, the joints yield, fascia unwinds, and all of the body's systems release tension and come into more coherent balance. Just from quietly being in warm water.
Now add to all this the effects of being held weightless, with your eyes closed and ears beneath the surface. Of feeling your body completely supported; feeling yourself safely cradled in the arms of a caring human being; feeling another person's warmth, another heartbeat, another breath. Perhaps not since you were a child -- if even then -- have you been held in so much comfort, and with such completely focused attention and loving care. This type of deeply connected, unconditional holding (which Harold Dull, developer of Watsu®, calls "rebonding") is something that each of us profoundly craves -- whether consciously or not. We seek the re-connection with the mother, and a return to the all-encompassing embrace, safety and watery warmth of the womb, where our bodies and physical awareness began.
Holding, floating, and therapeutic bodywork.
In the water -- where you are warm, safe, held, and relaxed -- bodywork can be as therapeutically effective as it is on a massage table. All the techniques of traditionally land-based bodywork can easily be applied -- from the most subtle, off-the-body energetic work, to massage throughout the body, and even the deepest structural integration. And because the whole body and being are already more open, the results of this bodywork can go beyond localized relief, to a whole-body systemic integration... and often, a profound spiritual experience.
For more about the spiritual possibilities of aquatic bodywork, see Finding Yourself In Warm Water.
For more about my personal approach to combining land-massage techniques with aquatic bodywork, read about the genesis of Fluidics in My Aquatic Massage Curriculum.
And if you have questions about the type of treatment that's most appropriate for you -- on land, or in the water -- please write me a note, and we can discuss it.
For more about the spiritual possibilities of aquatic bodywork, see Finding Yourself In Warm Water.
For more about my personal approach to combining land-massage techniques with aquatic bodywork, read about the genesis of Fluidics in My Aquatic Massage Curriculum.
And if you have questions about the type of treatment that's most appropriate for you -- on land, or in the water -- please write me a note, and we can discuss it.
How did bodywork in warm water change my life?
It was a full-moon evening at the warm pond in Hawaii, and Richard took me on an acrobat's thrill ride, around and up and under the water. It was the most freedom and joy I had ever, ever felt in my body! And hanging upside down underwater, with my knees over his shoulders and my head hanging down in the deep, I knew there had been lifetimes as a sperm whale and a humpback, and that in this lifetime, aquatic bodywork would become my work.
With that one session, I was hooked. I flew back to Vermont, closed my writing business, sold my beautiful house in the woods in the foothills of the Green Mountains, and drove across the country to Harbin Hot Springs... to take classes, practice, and spend what has turned out to be the rest of my life (so far) in a passionate affair with this work in warm water, and the ongoing discovery of how beautiful and powerfully healing and liberating it can be.
With that one session, I was hooked. I flew back to Vermont, closed my writing business, sold my beautiful house in the woods in the foothills of the Green Mountains, and drove across the country to Harbin Hot Springs... to take classes, practice, and spend what has turned out to be the rest of my life (so far) in a passionate affair with this work in warm water, and the ongoing discovery of how beautiful and powerfully healing and liberating it can be.