The body is a vehicle for the ocean to carry itself on land. The spine still has ocean waves in it, all bones are spiralling in their architecture and the sliding sheets of the fascia and muscle tissue are all water forms. Beneath the surface of the skin lies an aquatic world, warm and deprived of light. Just as the ocean is home to countless marine creatures, your cells float and thrive in a sea of interstitial fluid, each one a tiny organism navigating its watery environment. Your blood vessels are like intricate coral reefs, providing structure and nourishment, while lymphatic channels resemble gentle currents, guiding the flow of vital nutrients and removing waste. This internal ocean pulses with the rhythm of your heartbeat, a tidal force ensuring every cell is bathed in the life-giving essence it needs. In this profound underwater realm, the harmonious interplay of fluids and cells sustains the vibrant ecosystem that is your body.The following text contains excerpts from ‘Water: The Element of Life by Theodor Schwenk. Characteristics of Water
Life depends on water for its very life! Again we are confronted by a riddle: Water does not manifest a single life-characteristic. Yet where water is lacking, there can be no life. All the factors noted depend upon water.
Why, then, does water, which has no life-characteristics of its own, form the very basis of life in all life's various manifestations? Because water embraces every-thing, is in and all through everything, because it rises above the distinctions between plants and animals and human beings; because it is a universal element shared by all; itself undetermined, yet determining; because, like the primal mother it is, it supplies the stuff of life to everything living.
And what makes water capable of all these feats?
Renouncing any form of its own, it becomes the creative matrix for form in everything else.
Renouncing any life of its own, it becomes the primal substance of all life.
Renouncing material fixity, it becomes the implementer of material change.
Renouncing any rhythm of its own, it becomes the progenitor of rhythm elsewhere.
Is it any wonder, then, that in all highly developed cultures water has always been held sacred as the magically transforming substance, as the very "water of life”.
In the tides, the seas are caught up in the swing of cosmic rhythms that they then hand on to the earth and its creatures. All movement in water is affected by cosmic formative forces and serves the function of transmitting them. Thus, water occupies a median position between earth and the universe, and is the port of entry through which cosmic-peripheral forces pass into the earth realm.
May we not call water "nature's central organ," its “heart", the pulsing, oscillating drop that lets the whole cosmos pass through it? Its functions make it indeed the primal organ; it transmits cosmic forces and activities into the earth just as the heart mediates between processes of the upper and lower parts of the organism and functionally speaking embraces all the other organs.
Water does not grow because it is itself growth, growth-as-function, growth uncommitted to any particular growth pattern. Organs are also built on the model of the vortex-forming process, as may be noted in the way they always create a boundary between an inner and an outer space. Such facts make it evident how profoundly related water is to all life-functions, and most especially to those in the human organism.
In the chemical realm, water lies exactly at the neutral point between acid and alkaline, and is therefore able to serve as the mediator of change in either direction. In fact, water is the instrument of chemical change wherever it occurs in life and nature. In the light-realm, too, water occupies the middle ground between light and darkness. The rainbow, that primal phenomenon of colour, makes its shining appearance in and through the agency of water. In the realm of gravity, water counters heaviness with levity; thus, objects immersed in water take on buoyancy. In the heat-realm water takes a middle position between radiation and conduction. It is the greatest heat conveyer in the earth's organism, transporting inconceivable amounts of warmth from hot regions to cooler ones by means of the process known as heat convection. n every area water assumes the role of mediator. Encompassing both life and death, it constantly wrests the former from the latter.
How is water organised within us? Or rather how are we organised within it? Water moves through us and performs its life sustaining work by moving in spirals. This spiralling movement is enhanced by the pulsing motion of the heart, lungs and muscular layers of our body. The innate spiralling movement of water is contained within tubular structures which we call muscles, tendons, ligaments and bones. In the absence of continuous movement and breath, optimum circulation becomes hindered and fluid dynamics disrupted. The effect this has on the body is one of a altered chemical and nutritional balance in tissues such as muscle, cartilage, ligaments and bone. Swelling can also occur which disrupts our joint-positioning capabilities (proprioception), leading to altered movement and perhaps most pressingly the formation and stagnation of inflammation throughout the body. The change in chemical and mechanical balance can very quickly lead to a disrupted emotional state through pain, discomfort and fatigue. This places a tax on each of the bodily systems and in the short, medium and long term will have negative effects on your health.
Manual therapy modalities such as Osteopathy & Acupuncture can help to improve the flow of fluid by leveraging the body’s innate capabilities. Combining breath work and bodywork can untangle roots that are bound up in fascial and muscular tissue whilst also stimulating your arteries, veins, nerves and lymphatic vessels to produce spiralled movement of fluid throughout the entire body. Learning to enhance the movement of the pre-historic ocean within us can lead to some of the most powerful shifts in our inner world. Furthermore this can also be seen as both an injury preventative measure and healing modality in the rehabilitative phase.
Photography by Paul J. Tzimoulis
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