How to live a life in the water
Trust the River, Breathe, Let Go.
The edge of a pool, just before you dive in, is a scary place!
I was waiting to be seated at a South Indian hipster restaurant on a Friday night.
When they give me the last seat at the last table, I find myself directly across from another white person.
He’s handsome, that’s what I notice first.
Tall and lanky, dark hair, black denim vest with a big amber necklace.
He smiles, I avert my eyes in nervousness.
Which land on the empty wheelchair trike just next to him.
I order. Try not to look at the hot man across from me.
I should just ask him, I think.
Then freak out.
Because you don’t ask a total stranger if they want to be your Watsu demo person.
Even though your aquatic bodywork teacher has told you you have until tomorrow to find someone, and you know no one in this town.
It’s just not done. Not socially acceptable.
Especially if they are in a wheelchair, and you are new to training in this water modality and don’t know how to work with whatever his body might need.
Especially if they’re the kind of handsome that makes you breathless and panicky, to be honest.
But what if I just asked?
Isn't it fascinating how the things we judge the hardest often turn out to be the medicine we denied ourselves?
So it was for me with Watsu.
If you aren't from California, you may not have heard of this aquatic bodywork developed in the 1980s by Harold Dull at Harbin Hot Springs.
In Watsu, both client and practitioner are in warm water.
The client is cradled and moved in flowing sequences that allow deep softening.
Having lived in California and visited Harbin, I carried heavy judgment: hippies, man-buns, tantra-eyegazing, blurred boundaries, sleazy exchanges.
I saw vulnerability and thought: no thank you.
Too many messy emotions and feelings. Too touchy-feely.
But in India, I kept receiving a message—put your body in warm water.
I wanted to visit Auroville, the intentional city in Puducherry, and a friend said the best entry point was to attend an offering.
And they offered Watsu trainings—held right on the warm, salty Bay of Bengal.
I signed up reluctantly.
I wouldn’t tell anyone.
To my surprise, the training was profound.
My body loved receiving aquatic bodywork—and offering it.
There’s something about being held in warm water—your body stops bracing.
Your mind stops strategizing.
The peace and beauty I experience while practicing are ecstatic.
Not always, of course.
And the giving—moving another’s body through water while staying rooted in my own. It takes great focus.
But no one asked me to eyegaze!
And the water, oh, the water.
The first time my blood sugar dropped into my ideal range, I didn’t connect it to the pool.
A month later, the same thing happened at a different Watsu pool.
The only constant was spending significant time in warm water.
I connected the dots: I was partially in India to learn how to work with diabetes, and the answer was so simple.
What if the medicine isn’t complicated?
What if it’s warm, wet, and already surrounding us?
I’m holding T’s body in the warm pool.
This is the first time in 12 years the former ocean swimmer has been submerged in water.
His ALS made it almost impossible to climb down the ladder into the warm pool, but we went took our time, went slow.
On the bottom step he collapsed into the water, and I had to haul him back up to the surface to breathe.
“My body won’t behave like a normal body. It will seize up, and I’ll sink,” he’d told me the night before at the restaurant when I had finally worked up the courage to ask if he’d come.
“I’ll hold you the entire time, and make sure you are well-floated,” I’d replied.
His eyes had gleamed, and now here we were.
I moved gently through the pool with his body
Sometimes, being a beginner is an advantage.
I don’t know all the right moves.
I don’t know how to work with a body with ALS.
I’m learning with T’s tender body, and I feel a strong sense of responsibility to make the experience safe, tender, unforgettable.
So I do what my teacher taught: I make my hands like water.
I hold softly, let water do the work. Release all effort.
From the water, the world looks different.
If the conditions are just right, you can sink up to your nose, and the water and the horizon blend together.
Your brain perceives a quiet vastness.
While in India, immersing in warm water became a miracle of healing.
Just by returning to my aquatic roots, human ailments were soothed.
The near-weightlessness of water grants freedom, balance, grace, ease.
My inner six-year-old ballerina leaped and twirled joyfully.
Joints hurt less. Flexibility returns. Mental overworking dissolves.
In water, flow states arrive effortlessly.
Stillness is always near.
It feels like a miracle that the best medicine for my diabetes is something I love.
The question became: how can I live more of my life in the water?
And what if everyone could feel this un-gripping?
What if we could be like water?
We come from water.
The slippery dolphin-seal part of the brain remembers gliding, surfacing, diving.
It remembers sensing loved ones through means other than sight, or Share Live Location.
In water, we remember who we are at our core: fluid, alive, in motion.
Identities dissolve.
Mental chatter sloshes away.
We become children again, dancing through a dense medium that holds and uplifts.
Two of my water teachers have spent so much time in the water they’ve lessened bone density!
Especially for those with larger bodies, fat becomes a gift: warmth, flotation, and liberation.
Gravity loses its grip.
In the water, I feel the freest.
I want to be like water.
I recently drove along the South Toe River in Yancey County, North Carolina.
During Hurricane Helene, when the devastating storm hit my hometown, water rose 26 feet—about three stories—above the riverbank.
What had been a riverside stretch of homes, studios, and trailers was now bare scarland, littered with splintered trees.
Even the small white church across the road from my favorite swimming hole had floated away, empty foundations marking where it had once held the sacred every Sunday.
The river takes what the river takes.
What the river takes, let it go.
Even as I grieved, I celebrated.
Be it calcium from bone or a community church, water’s power is undeniable.
It carves canyons, drowns cities, wears down mountains—and inside us, it moves emotion, memory, and our very blood.
Water can destroy—but it can also heal. Our bodies, our spirits, our grief.
I want to be like water.
Lacking a Watsu pool or a hot spring (my longest-held dream), how can I still live a water life?
Once we know the environment our body thrives in, how do we move toward it?
I can’t live as my Watsu teachers do, submerged daily—but I can focus on water’s power.
How often do I touch water each day?
Constantly: the toilet, the shower, the tea kettle.
The sink, the bathtub, the water bottle.
Washing dishes, misting plants, distilling rosewater, watering the garden.
Changing the cat’s fountain, filling the water filter. Cleaning the floors.
Pouring libations. Praying over ritual water. Dumping the mop bucket.
Hosing the car.
For now, living a water life means attending to water.
Making a temple of daily tasks.
After six months of cold bucket baths, hot water spraying from the wall feels miraculous.
I try to remember—not to take the waters of my life for granted.
Water touches every living being daily.
"If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water," wrote scientist and philosopher Loren Eiseley.
Across world religions, water is sacred—medium of communion between human and divine.
It purifies body and soul. It symbolizes birth, death, transformation.
Rituals across traditions: pouring, sipping, blessing, bathing, infusing.
Tea ceremonies. Libations. Rivers. Tubs.
Hands cupped in reverence, spilling water back to the Ocean.
A life in the water is not always about where you are.
It’s about what you pay attention to.
It takes T. 15 minutes to climb out of the Watsu pool.
The bathroom is not accessible, so he has to pee in the public shower.
I hover, not knowing my role on land now the session is over.
Once he is dressed, we sit and sip tea, he in his trike chair, and me on a stone bench in the garden.
I wait for him to speak, as I’ve been taught.
“As soon as I got into the water, I felt completely free.”
Neither of us mentions the salt water that leaked from our eyes during the gorgeous hour we’d spent in silence together.
Nor do we discuss the collaborative elegance of moving in flow and rhythm within the range of his body and my skill level.
Something more intimate than sex had passed between us: Surrender.
Our wet goodbye hug lasts far longer than you’d expect between two strangers who met over dinner.
I recently wrote about Camp LightHeart, the adult online summer camp I am holding as an anti-capitalist experiment.
Can I offer guidance and hold space for content I love, like water, and simultaneously meet your needs and mine, while making all classes have no financial barrier to access?
You can read more about Camp LightHeart here.
In these times, I hear it may not feel very serious to focus on feeling good.
But as many wise teachers say, feeling good in this moment is an act of revolution.
Sure, you can attend all the trauma rituals you need to, but feeling good deliberately? That’s radical!
I’ll be writing a post to introduce each week of Camp LightHeart.
We start this coming Monday 5/19.
So, if you're craving more pleasure and flow in your life… and if you are tired of the constant exhaustion and heaviness…
Join me for the first week of Camp LightHeart
How to Be Like Water
Come, feeling too heavy to float.
Swim away with more access to movement and joy!
Can water teach us how to soften, play and move again? I think so.
During this week, we will engage with the mystery of water.
We will explore flow states, make potions, and use hydration as a magick spell.
We will play ritually like dolphins and manatees.
We will remember to notice the sunlight sparkling on water, and fill our cup with light.
And you’ll be doing it in the company of others, each one remembering their own wild, shimmering water body.
Your water pod!
Sometimes, finding your way back to yourself is easier when you’re held—by water, by others, by rhythm and ritual.
Note: There is no need to have access to a pool or tub to participate.
We will explore vessels for water, and how containment gives our watery nature permission to be!
Using magick, somatics, fun, and experimentation, you will deepen your connection with water, perhaps becoming or reviving your water mystic along the way.
This week’s vibe: "Let me be like water" by Lo Wolf.
Live gatherings on Zoom: Monday 5/19 7 PM ET & Saturday, 5/24, 12 PM ET.
Cost: GAYBAGS (Give as you are able, but always give something.) Suggested donation $75-125.
Let's float together! Let your body be held. Let your spirit dissolve into joy.
Ready to come to camp?
Make payment via Venmo:
@pavini-morayYou'll receive a welcome packet, supply list, and instructions.
I utterly enjoyed reading this. thank you. so interesting. not sure exactly where i will go with it but it gives me interesting feelings. ... celebrating water :) extra intentionally. <3 <3 <3