Water is Life, Water is Us
A stunning waterfall in El Salvador
I’ve always had an affinity for water. Lakes, oceans, waterfalls, backyard swimming pools. Anywhere there was water, there was me.
One year in high school I decided to drink 2 litres of the stuff each day, and it’s been me and my “emotional support” water bottle ever since. I don’t go anywhere without that thing. In fact, a car once ran over my reusable bottle. It was utterly mangled and misshapen, but since it could still stand, I continued to use it for another 4 months, even in a corporate setting - however sheepishly.
Throughout my 20s, I would often sip water in between my alcoholic drinks. Fellow partiers would grimace and demand to know why I was consuming this fruitless beverage.
“Because water is the elixir of life”, I would clap back, to which they didn’t tend to argue.
Though I often describe water as such, I didn’t understand the intricacies as to why. My journey into a deeper understanding of water began about two years ago when I was encouraged to whisper sweet nothings into any vessel before I consumed it. “What kind of hocus pocus is this?”, I thought, but it turns out that the science is in favour.
Dr Masaru Emoto found that water can store memory and its molecular structure is influenced by outside forces. His experiments illustrated that, when exposed to positive words or intentions, the water formed beautiful, symmetrical, crystalline patterns. However, when subjected to negative words, or even heavy metal music, the patterns became disorganized and asymmetrical. Note in the pictures below how the words influence the water’s patterns. People have replicated similar studies at home with rice and water, placing “love” on one jar and “hate” on another with some striking results.
And so, nowadays I like to whisper nice things into my water, like “I love you” or “please heal me”, when I’m unwell, to improve its structure. According to water educator, Isabel Friend, the structure is what gives water its vitality, leading to increased hydration and overall health due to water’s ability to better absorb into cells, detoxify, transport nutrients and support cellular communication. She also explains that your “cellular voltage” – the actual electrical energy in your body - is a 1-1 ratio with your hydration, which explains why being hydrated makes us more energised.
I’ve also heard before that humans are water, and I thought, “yeah ok, we need it to live so that’s probably why, right?” Wrong. In volume, we sit at around 60-70% water but on a molecular level we are 99.2% water molecules. For every 1,000 molecules in our body, 999 of them are water and the water we drink becomes our blood in as little as 5 minutes! Interestingly, ageing is essentially the process of drying out and, while there is not yet consensus on this, research is starting to find that dehydration is at the root of absolutely all states of disease in the body (but hydration is not solely linked to drinking water – that’s a whole other topic).
What I find most compelling, however, is the symbiosis of water between our human body and the earth body. Turns out, our cerebrospinal fluid is only one molecule different from seawater. Friend offers this poetic depiction of our evolution: “we’re basically drops of [the ocean]…It’s only because our ancient ancestors adapted to carry the oceans within them as their own blood stream that they were able to walk on land and we still carry those primeval oceans within ourselves.”
What’s more is that water cannot be destroyed. Like all other living beings, it moves through a life cycle where, during the evaporation-condensation-precipitation sequence, it does not die but merely changes form. When water is outside the body it is rain, river, glacier, snow, mist, condensation and humidity. When it’s inside the body it exists as blood, lymph, cerebrospinal fluid, saliva and breath. If water is continuously transforming, this means that the water that lives within us has travelled this planet for billions of years. It may once have been an Inuit’s igloo, a dinosaur’s blood, the saliva of a jaguar, a grandmother’s tear or the sweat of your favourite sports star. And, as we’ve just discovered, water holds memory and is thus encoded with the imprint of all earth’s history, and we have the privilege to bathe in and devour this crystal liquid every single day. How lucky are we?
“A drop of water, if it could write out it’s own history would explain the universe to us” – Lucy Larcom
The information I have conveyed here does not even begin to scratch the surface of the depths of water’s brilliance. There is so much more to uncover - and I strongly suggest that you do - but really, the purpose of this is to encourage you to have more reverence for this mystical elixir. It’s to remind you that this earth, this precious, sacred rock that we have the privilege to exist on for a brief spec of time is so much more magical and miraculous than we have been led to believe. There are mind blowing truths at every turn and it pays to revel in the wonder of it. Remaining animated, giddy and in awe at life’s mysteries is what keeps us alive and awake. It’s what brings us back to gratitude and helps us feel small and insignificant (and our egos could all stand to be taken down a few pegs).
Let this too serve as a reminder to always be kind to yourself. If we are simply bodies of water, and water takes on words and intention, then every thought, every whispered word, becomes part of your being. Let your words flow beauty through your veins and shape generosity and love into the tides of your soul.
The majority of this information was adopted from a podcast with water expert, Isabel Friend, and was inspired by the second moon in my slow study, Deepen Your Roots.