WATSU - Who Knew?

EXPERIENCING PROFOUND SENSORY BEAUTY IN A RADICALLY NEW WAY –

Maybe it’s the fact that at forty-five years old I don’t have completely new experiences all that often.  New encounters? Sure.  Every human being is unique – but an experience, especially a sensory one, that is so profound and so extraordinary I want to tell you about it?  I guess if I did sky-diving, or bungee jumping – but I’m not the type to do those things.   Today I got to experience not only something totally new to my body, but also so extraordinarily beautiful, I just feel compelled to tell you about it.

I’ve been staying at my friend Rene’s house in Edmonton.  She is by far the best yoga instructor I’ve ever had the good fortune of encountering, but she also runs an Airbnb from her home and so there are always other interesting people to meet when I come visiting.  (She is also a personal chef, so staying with her is always a culinary treat, and she’s hosted a few house concerts for me and gotten other friends of hers to host as well, so suffice it to say this woman scores as high as the score goes! She’s also side-splittingly funny so we always laugh when we’re together!)

Well it just so happens that on this late summer weekend, Rene tells me her upstairs guest is here for an intensive Watsu training. Watsu? What’s that??

From her description, it is basically therapeutic movement through water, guided by a practitioner, and I am immediately compelled.

I love being in water.  I’ve loved it since I was little.

In Jerusalem there’s no lake or sea, so the swimming pool was my only access to it, other than the bathtub, and I certainly remember the way moving my tiny three-year-old and four-year-old body through water fascinated me.  When left to my own devices in the tub, I would experiment with swishing my limbs through it in different ways, bending and straightening and turning my limbs this way and that.

As older kids in Canada, we swam in our share of lakes and my sister and I would summer-sault and twist and turn and do hand-stands and put our arms to our sides and kick, kick, kick, pretending we were dolphins. 

In swimming pools I would hop up and grab my knees with my arms wrapping around them and observe how I would sink to the bottom, swayed side to side and tilted by the water.

You get the picture.

There was about a five year gap or so where I hadn’t gotten to be in water anywhere, during my university years, and I’ll never forget how my first time back in an outdoor pool, a playfulness returned to my body I’d thought I’d lost forever, and I let out an almost maniacal laugh, like a hyena or an exuberant child, pure glee.  I thought I’d never experience that again.

I tried a few aqua fitness classes in my thirties, and I thought they were a brilliant way to get an intensive workout without having to endure the heaviness of my body – a heaviness I am always aware of, and which, in my forties, is not only just heavier because of gradual weight-gain, but also because I am certain that time, experiences and memories collude with gravity to pull on your muscles and bones and skin.  I always say, a dip in a lake or the ocean has me coming out feeling young again.

So – you can imagine that hearing about Watsu perked my attention!   “Hmmm.. I’d really like to try that someday!” I told Rene.

Later that evening, Rene her boyfriend Thomas and I sat in the living room, and Tanya came back from her eight-hour training session.  After showering, she joined us with glowing skin and an air of serenity to her that was immediately appealing.   A long, thin, tie-dye dress and headband – and I began to ask her questions about her practice.

She offered to show us some videos and the first one was of a regular Watsu session:  A woman standing in her bathing suit, holding another woman, like a limp child, supporting her under her back and head, and moving her through the water, slowly turning. 

“ohhhh myyyyyyy” – I said.  I had a memory of my father holding me that way in the pool, and how much I loved surrending and flopping, and how the water would make my hair flow behind my head with the motion. 

I recalled telling a friend just a few years ago, and even drawing a picture of it to try to explain it, of someone holding me at the waist from behind, and pulling me through what I didn’t imagine at the time to be water, but it was that very sensation I was very specifically craving, though I could not articulate why, to myself nor to my friend.

So, seeing this video really stirred me. I had not understood from the earlier descriptions that someone was holding you, carrying you through the water. 

“Oh my god, I want this!”  -

Tanya continued to explain that her main passion with Watsu was working with disabled children.  This immediately moved me because, of course! – When does a wheelchair bound person ever get to feel their body move so freely!   I’ve seen examples of dance being facilitated to wheelchair bound people, and thought that it was tremendous, but in this you don’t have to exert any effort.   By the time she was done telling us about her passion for this specific use of Watsu, Rene and I were both crying on the opposite couch, and laughing at the fact that we were crying.

By the time I finally said “I want this” out loud, Tanya said she had openings the next day for all three of us to have a session.  I still had two more days in town.  I didn’t even remotely hesitate.  She would even pick me up for the appointment so I wouldn’t have to figure out my own way there. 

I didn’t fully know what to expect, but I trusted this woman’s head, soul and heart after seeing her tenderness and instinct with the most fragile of children.

The next day, preparing for pick-up, I showered as instructed and wore shorts and a bra that I figured I would be the most comfortable wearing, being held and moved around in the water.

Tanya picked me up and we drove to the place.

And then I was there.  I entered a back-yard and saw something I can only describe as a small pavilion- an enclosure, like a circus tent but paneled, and some kind of tarp over it.  Inside was an above-ground pool, round.  The air inside the space was warm, and the water, I was told, would be too.   Tanya got into the pool first, and showed me what I could hold on to while going up the three steps, so that I could be steady.  

In the pool we faced each other, sort of squatting, and she held my hands, told me to feel grounded, with my feet, and then explained that some people are “floaters” and some are “sinkers” and in order to determine what kind of floats to choose, which would go around my thighs, she would hold me up and I would lay back into her outstretched arm, and she would gauge it.   I laughed that that is how they used to determine if a woman was a witch – whether she sinks or floats, but I couldn’t remember which one meant you were a witch.   We did that, and she said “you’re a blue.”  And she got two blue flotation devices that look like strips of life-jacket material.    Velcro to attach them and make them adjustable.  She instructed me how to hold on to her and how she would position my leg to put them on me.  She spoke in soft warm tones to me, gentle as can be.     Once they were fastened, we faced each other again and she held my hands, both of us with our knees bent so as to be submerged all the way to our necks.    She said “take a nice inhale and see how that makes you rise up in the water, and when you exhale see how you sink back.  Just do that a few times to feel it.” And I did, amazed at how a simple inhale made my chest and shoulders rise out of the water, and the exhale bring me back down, and backwards.    She said for me not to worry about my position in the water, that she was going to always put me in the right space so I didn’t have to, for example, pull myself closer to her if I was floating backwards.  She was going to keep me where I needed to be.

She asked me if I had anything she should know, about my body, about any trauma I had, if I would find any touch triggering or upsetting, as we would be very close and touching as she moved me through the water. I told her I am not averse to touch at all, and that water is a happy and comforting place for me, so I didn’t foresee that being an issue.  She told me I could just open my eyes and look at her if I felt any distress and that would signal her to pause and check in with me.  She also explained that if she felt I was clenching anywhere she would just gently tap that part with her fingers to signal me to try and let go a bit more.  And then she talked about how it was emotional for some people, and as she said that, I welled up some, and through tears said “that’s likely to happen. I cry a lot as a form of release.”  Totally welcome and safe, she said, to do that there, and if it becomes too much or too distressed, we would pause. I imagined myself sobbing, which I have done at times in body-release work.   But I knew I was safe with her, and was curious about what I was about to experience.

There was music playing and it was perfect, floating, soothing, feminine music that fit the watery and dream-scape realm.  We nodded a kind of kind and solemn non-verbal agreement to each other, and … began.

I liked it immediately.

I was excited by how much I liked it and a “me-in-me” was chatting to me internally about it, letting me know how much this was like a sensation I almost imagined in the past, and craved, and then I was thinking of all the people I would want to tell this to, that they might find it interesting, and then I laughed at myself (internally – this was all internal chatter) at how chatty I was internally, and how I wasn’t sure if that ever stopped in me, and I certainly didn’t know how to, but it was interesting because I could “see” my body’s motions as if from above too, and that Orit was so soothed and relaxed and observing it on a bodily level, that I didn’t think the mental chatter was detracting too much from any therapeutic value this would have on my body.

Eventually, though I don’t know when, that chatter disappeared, almost entirely.

At some point, in my mind’s eye, I saw the brightest of green, like splatters of fluorescent paint in the air, forming the shape of a human heart,

It’s hard to describe the movements, but Tanya supported my head and shoulders and moved through the water (with her feet on the ground), so that I would swirl in it, but she would also twist me into different positions, and at times squeeze or massage my arm, or my foot, or hold my hips and move them up and down so that I would release tension there, and at times I was twisted so that my head was tilted to the side with my face resting on her shoulder or chest, and at times she was behind me with her cheek against my cheek – All of it felt divine- maternal- archetypal- peaceful – nurturing, safe, mysterious, mystical, harmonious  - and I flowed with it.

At some point she turned me and brought my knees to my chest, leaning on the left, and I became sad, and clenched, though I didn’t realise I had become so until she tapped me with her fingers to release the tension, and it occurred to me that I automatically became sad and self-pitying and clenched because that is the pose I get into when I am distressed in a post-traumatic way, and don’t want to be uncurled by anybody – and it struck me as remarkably healing to be put into that position and be shown that I’m in fact, ok and that that posture doesn’t have to mean that, and she uncurled me gently in the water, and I continued to float, and was able to release it. When she put me in the same position but on the other side, there was no issue, and I realized when I’m in distress and go into that pose, I always do so to the left.

We continued along, different poses, floating, swaying through the water, my ears were under-water so the music was muted in a soothing way, and all I kept thinking was, “this is so beautiful, this is so beautiful.”

At some point she pressed into my shoulder blade and I glimpsed in my mind’s eye a scenic view of Jerusalem, and I thought for a while about how I sometimes “memory-pop” into different places, (or they, into me), without me really understanding if I was supposed to remember a particular moment in time, or just the place. 

And then I let the thought go and kept floating, and toward what I assumed was the end I began to wonder with each pose if it was going to be the last. I could tell we were drawing to a close.

At no point in this entire experience did I open my eyes or verbalise anything. I was in a kind of bliss and paying inward attention, aware of her and her softness and warmth, but knowing I didn’t need to acknowledge it with any words.   I released a few little whimpers and purrs when certain presses into muscles felt particular needed and good.  For the rest, I’m pretty sure I was silent.

She had told me that I would know that the session was through when I would feel her remove the Velcro floaters from around my legs and she would bring my back to touch the wall of the pool and my feet would be on the floor, and that the session would be officially over when she would let go of my body completely.  And that there should be no rush for me to get out of the pool.  I could have some time to take it in and readjust.

When those things happened in their pre-articulated sequence, the last thing she did before letting go of me was take one hand of mine and place it on my chest, and then take the other and do the same so that my arms were crossed over my chest with my hands at my heart.  It felt brilliant and beautiful because there was almost an infant-like response to not wanting to be “put back down” and this pose allowed me to feel like I was embracing and holding myself and that I would, therefore, be ok. That I had what I needed in my own self to support myself.

It was at this point that I welled up again with emotion, because the entire experience had been so incredibly beautiful.

This was a very personal experience that I have decided to share, and I have to ask myself why.  Why does this feel worthy of a public essay.   It is not to promote Tanya and Rene (though I’m happy to do that, word of mouth helps people who are doing good things in this world in independent ways. I’m one of the people who word of mouth helps! – But that’s not why I’m sharing this. And it’s not to “product-review” Watsu, though I certainly wouldn’t mind a job for some magazine where I go around trying all sorts of body-work therapies and describe them in detail afterwards so people can know what to expect if they want to try it.  (If anyone wants to hire me for that job, I’m more than game!)

But this isn’t a magazine. This is my space to share writing about things I find meaningful and profound.   And what compelled me to write this is to maybe just invite you to imagine yourself surrendering in perfect safety to the flow of water.  To feel trust in what’s supporting and carrying you.  The metaphor in that is so incredibly powerful.

And to celebrate the fact that despite all of the horrible things that human beings do, there are also creative, beautiful people who think in realms beyond the norm, and come up with these inventive ways to help one another, to help release the harm that has happened.  And thinking about that gives me hope, about tending to and healing my own scars, but about the very fact that this is possible and that there are people out there who want to help you do that.

If that is not uplifting, which is an appropriate word to use considering I was literally uplifted today, then I don’t know what is.

There is magic out there that wants to find you and heal what’s broken.

 Be attentive to the opportunities to learn about it.

With love and care,

Orit